A Thousand Ships
A Thousand Ships is Natalie Haynes's 2019 novel, the third of her retellings of Greek myth from the perspective of women. Haynes, a British classicist and broadcaster, opens the book with Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, in mid-grumble at being asked yet again to inspire a male poet whose subject will be a Trojan War he insists on telling through its men. The chapters that follow rotate the war's women through the spotlight in turn. Hecuba, queen of fallen Troy, sits in the smoke of her conquered city while the Greeks divide her surviving women among themselves. Her daughter Cassandra, cursed never to be believed, prophesies the deaths of her captors. Briseis, taken by Achilles, watches the famous quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon from a slave's vantage. Penelope writes increasingly impatient letters to Odysseus across the long aftermath of the war. The Amazon queen Penthesilea, the river-nymph Oenone, and the three goddesses on Mount Ida each get their own chapters.
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The fall of Troy seen entirely through its women: queens taken as spoils, mothers burying sons, a poet calling on her muse, and the goddesses whose vanity started the whole thing.
Yes. Natalie Haynes retells the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved, including Helen, Penelope, Cassandra, the Amazons, and the chorus of Trojan women. The novel covers events that span both the Iliad and the Odyssey.
A Thousand Ships was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020 and was a Sunday Times bestseller. It is widely cited alongside Madeline Miller's Circe in the wave of feminist mythology retellings.
A Thousand Ships was written by Natalie Haynes, published in 2019 by HarperCollins Canada, Limited.
A Thousand Ships is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A Thousand Ships takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
A Thousand Ships is a standalone novel by Natalie Haynes, not part of a series.
A Thousand Ships is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
