The Silence of the Girls: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 - Softcover

Barker, Pat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241338093 ISBN 13: 9780241338094

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2018

Synopsis

A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century

Shorlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Award

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

There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now...

Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?

Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness history forgot.

'Make[s] you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard

Praise for Pat Barker:

'Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation' Sunday Telegraph

'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature' Independent

'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human' Herald

'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world' Guardian

About this title

Review

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)

A stunning return to form (Observer)

Angry, thoughtful, sad, deeply humane and compulsively readable, The Silence of the Girls shows that 36 years after her first novel was published, Barker is a writer at the peak of her powers (Irish Times)

Its magnificent final section can't help but make you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers (Evening Standard)

An assured triumph (Sunday Times)

An important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliad but at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, and at how anger and hatred play out in our societies (Guardian)

She gives a voice to the voiceless...The Silence of the Girls is a book that will be read in generations to come (Daily Telegraph)

An impressive feat of literary revisionism that should be on the Man Booker longlist... This is a story about the very real cost of wars waged by men... Barker makes us re-think history (Independent)

Giving voice to the voiceless, this is a gripping feat of imagination that succeeds in being relevant today (Woman and Home)

The most important novel based on The Iliad so far this century (Edith Hall)

From the Back Cover

When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis's old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

The Trojan War is known as a man's story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home and spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman's journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0241338093
• ISBN 13: 9780241338094
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336