Pat Barker: The Women of Troy

Ever since winning the Booker Prize in 1995 for the third book in her Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker has demonstrated an uncanny ability to describe the psychology of individuals during times of conflict. In 2019 Barker published The Silence of the Girls, beginning her retelling of the great classical myth, The Iliad. Join Barker for the launch of the sequel, The Women of Troy, in a conversation with journalist Lee Randall, at the 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival. As the action begins, Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors, loaded with their spoils. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind does not come. So the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed. In these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester. Amidst her squabbling captors, Briseis – now married to Alcimus, but carrying the child of the late Achilles – must forge alliances where she can.