The Silence of the Girls
Briseis, a queen enslaved by Achilles during the Trojan War, tells the Iliad from the perspective of the women who lived through it.
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When the small Trojan ally city of Lyrnessus falls to the Greeks in the ninth year of the war, its young queen Briseis is taken as Achilles's war prize. From the Greek camp, she watches Achilles, his cousin Patroclus, and the quarrel with Agamemnon that decides the last summer of the siege.
Yes. The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis, the captive woman whose claim by Achilles drives the central conflict. It is widely cited alongside Madeline Miller's Circe and Pat Barker's other Trojan retellings.
Pat Barker has written three connected novels in the Women of Troy trilogy: The Silence of the Girls, The Women of Troy, and The Voyage Home. The trilogy is complete.
The Silence of the Girls was written by Pat Barker, published in 2018 by Anchor.
The Silence of the Girls is 315 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, The Silence of the Girls takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Silence of the Girls is a standalone novel by Pat Barker, not part of a series.
The Silence of the Girls is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
