The Women of Troy

Format:

Buy the book from:

Amazon Blackwells Bookshop.org Foyles Hive Waterstones WHSmith

Troy has fallen and the Greek victors are primed to return home, loaded with spoils. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.

But the wind does not come. The gods are offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in uneasy limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed. The coalition that held them together begins to fray, as old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.

Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, erstwhile queen Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can - with young, rebellious Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest - and she begins to see the path to revenge...

In a novel filled with names from legend, Briseis stands tall as a heroine: brave, smart and loyal. Barker's latest is a wonder.
Publisher's Weekly

As a novelist, Barker has always looked on the world with the combination of a cold eye and a sympathetic understanding. Her characterisation is sharp, her sympathy deep. She extends it even to the often brutal men.
Her overall achievement is to have taken one of the great myths of European history, something that has permeated Western culture for 3,000 years, and made something new and immediate of it.
i

About Pat Barker

Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her late thirties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. She has published sixteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy which includes the Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road. The Silence of the Girls was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and won an Independent Bookshop Award 2019. The Women of Troy was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. The Voyage Home continues the series.

Details

Imprint: Penguin
Published: 02/06/2022
ISBN: 9780241988336
Length: 320 pages
Dimensions: 196mm x 20mm x 129mm
Weight: 230g
Price: £9.99

All editions

The Women of Troy

Format:

Buy the book from:

In a novel filled with names from legend, Briseis stands tall as a heroine: brave, smart and loyal. Barker's latest is a wonder.

This continuation of the Trojan woman's story feels like another victory for every person who was silenced by history, their story stolen from them

A stirring adventure set amid a misogynist dystopia

Barker is at her best when she evokes Hecuba's grief on the shore, surrounded by a group of female slaves with the ruined city behind them...

I'd still rather read Barker's take on the gruesome realities and costs of war - ancient or modern - than any other novelist out there.

Merciless, stripped of consoling beauty, impressively bleak.

This is a powerful page-turner, bringing ancient characters and stories into full colour. Skip Homer, and just enjoy this epic read

Briseis . . . returns again in this rich, readable sequel . . . Barker brings to life the mythical Trojan women.

Pat Barker writes wonderfully - I've read most of her books. When she describes something, it feels sensory and concrete. You can imagine clearly what she's talking about. I couldn't put it down.

About Pat Barker

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter