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The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker retells The Iliad from the point of view of Briseis, a young Trojan queen who is enslaved by Achilles; she is his reward for a military victory. The Trojan women have a complicated relationship with their Greek captors and Briseis is no exception. What these women endure is brutal; Barker doesn't gloss over the violence of war or the treatment of those enslaved. Content warnings apply.
About the Book
Publisher’s description:
Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles: famed hero, loathed enemy, ruthless butcher, darkly troubled spirit. Briseis’s fate is now indivisibly entwined with his.
No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad: the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers’ camp – in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number – and she will be our witness to history.
Other books in the "Greek mythology-inspired retellings"
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