The

The Welcome to Literary Fiction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt here, as always, with my co-host, Octavia.

Hi, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. Octavia, you're very sick today.

I am. I'm croaky like a frog, I'm afraid. I think you sound all right. Okay, that's good.

Are you up to your full mental agility? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay, good. Excellent. Well,

this month's theme is objects, and we'll be looking at all those things that populate our favorite books from the one ring to rule them all to Miss Havisham's Cake to the Red Wheelbarrow and William Carlos Williams poem of the same name.

Very exciting. And as usual, our theme is inspired by our guest. This month, it's the wonderful Harry Parker, whose debut novel, Anatomy of a Soldier, is actually narrated by objects, not people.

45 things, ranging from dog tags to a bomb, to a mattress, to a surgical sore.

And these objects witnessed the life of Captain Tom Barnes as he goes to war

somewhere in the Middle East and then after he recovers in England post a horrible IED explosion.

Harry himself served with the British army in Afghanistan and Iraq and today he is a writer

and artist based in London. We will also be talking about the theme and giving our book recommendations.

So stay tuned for the next hour on literary friction.

But first here is our interview with Harry Parker.

Harry Parker, thanks so much for being with us on literary friction today.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me along.

So when you sat down to write this book,

who did you envision reading it,

and why did you want them to read it?

I spent, well, I sat down to write it.

I tried to write a book that I'd want to read

and that I'd never read before.

...