Book description
Welcome to our war The Two Worlds of Charlie F. is a soldier's view
of service, injury and recovery. Moving from the war in Afghanistan,
through the dream world of morphine-induced hallucinations to the
physio rooms of Headley Court, the play explores the consequences of
injury, both physical and psychological, and its effects on others as
the soldiers fight to win the new battle for survival at home. Drawn
from the personal experience of the wounded, injured and sick Service
personnel involved, Owen Sheers's The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
premiered at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in January 2012 and
toured nationally that summer.
Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny,
South Wales. The winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue
Young Writer's Award, his first collection of poetry, The Blue Book
(Seren, 2000) was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year and the
Forward Prize Best First Collection 2001. His debut prose work The Dust
Diaries (Faber, 2004), a non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe, was
shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and won
the Welsh Book of the Year 2005. In 2004 he was Writer in Residence at
the Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book
Society's 'Twenty Next Generation Poets'. Owen's second collection of
poetry, Skirrid Hill (Seren, 2005) won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and
is a WJEC and AQA A level set text. Unicorns, almost his one man play
based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas was
developed by Old Vic, New Voices. Owen's first novel, Resistance, has
been translated into eight languages. His recent collaboration with
composer Rachel Portman, The Water Diviner's Tale, an oratorio for
children, was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms 2007.
His essay Bomb Gone, about Britain's Christmas Island thermonuclear
tests, appears in Granta 101. Owen is currently a Dorothy and Lewis B.
Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
