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Shorlisted for the Women´s Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the Gordon Burn Prize

Booker-winning novelist Pat Barker imagines the untold story of the women at the heart of history´s greatest epic

´Magnificent... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers´ Evening Standard

´Chilling, powerful, audacious... A searing twist on The Iliad. Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker´s stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion´ The Times

´A stunning return to form´ Observer

When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers´ camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men - but Briseis has a very different tale to tell . . .

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A searing twist on The Iliad... Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker´s stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion... Chilling, powerful, audacious The Times

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Barker, Pat
Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK´s highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her latest novel is The Silence of the Girls.

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