THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERBest Books of the Year GuardianThe poignant story of the visionary
surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the First World War's injured heroes and in the process
ushered in the modern era of plastic surgeryFrom the moment the first machine gun rang out over
the Western Front one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its
medical capabilities. The war's new weaponry from tanks to shrapnel enabled slaughter on an
industrial scale and given the nature of trench warfare thousands of soldiers sustained
facial injuries. Medical advances meant that more survived their wounds than ever before yet
disfigured soldiers did not receive the hero's welcome they deserved.In The Facemaker
award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the astonishing story of the pioneering
plastic surgeon Harold Gillies who dedicated himself to restoring the faces - and the
identities - of a brutalized generation. Gillies a Cambridge-educated New Zealander became
interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the
front. Returning to Britain he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated
entirely to facial reconstruction in Sidcup south-east England. There Gillies assembled a
unique group of doctors nurses and artists whose task was to recreate what had been torn
apart. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero but losing a face made him a monster
to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement Gillies restored not just the faces of the
wounded but also their spirits.Meticulously researched and grippingly told The Facemaker
places Gillies's ingenious surgical innovations alongside the poignant stories of soldiers
whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine and art
can merge and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless
horror.
