The Women of Troy

Barker, Pat

ISBN 10: 0241427231 / ISBN 13: 9780241427231

Published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd / Penguin Group / Random House, London, 2021

About this Item

First edition, first impression with '001' on copyright page. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, WITHOUT DEDICATION, IN BLACK PEN, ON EXCLUSIVE SIGNED EDITION PAGE. Some very slight edge wear to top and bottom of jacket and spine, a small dint to front page fore edges, tiny tear to front fore edge of dedication page, not price clipped (£18.99), no other inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall a vg+ copy, unopened, unread. 307pp, illustrated endpapers. Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors, all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it. The women of Troy. Helen, poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace, and she was just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over. Cassandra, who has learned not to be too attached to her own prophecies. They have only ever been believed when she can get a man to deliver them. Stubborn Amina, with her gaze still fixed on the ruined towers of Troy, determined to avenge the slaughter of her king. Hecuba, howling and clawing her cheeks on the silent shore, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead. And Briseis, carrying her future in her womb, the unborn child of the dead hero Achilles. Once again caught up in the disputes of violent men. Once again faced with the chance to shape history. Masterful and enduringly resonant, ambitious and intimate 'The Women of Troy' continues Pat Barker's extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest classical myths, following on from the critically acclaimed 'The Silence of the Girls'. A future classic, scarce signed.

Seller Inventory # 012323

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Women of Troy
• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd / Penguin Group / Random House, London
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241427231
• ISBN 13: 9780241427231
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Jacket by Sarah Young
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Following her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths.

Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.

But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea. And, in these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.

Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can - with young, dangerously naïve Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest - and begins to see the path to a kind of revenge. Briseis has survived the Trojan War, but peacetime may turn out to be even more dangerous...