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  • Published: 15 June 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241988336
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

The Women of Troy

The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller




Sequel to critically acclaimed bestseller The Silence of the Girls

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...

  • Published: 15 June 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241988336
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Pat Barker

Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995), which won the Booker Prize, as well as the more recent novels Border Crossing and Double Vision. She lives in Durham.

Also by Pat Barker

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Praise for The Women of Troy

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

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

Refinery 29

A stirring adventure set amid a misogynist dystopia

Anthony Cummins, The Observer

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...

TLS

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

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

Daily Express

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

New Statesman