Books by Pat Barker

“She turns The Iliad inside out, telling it from a female perspective. Various scenes have stayed with me—particularly one scene towards the end of The Silence of the Girls, where Priam’s daughter Polyxena is sacrificed on Achille’s burial mound. It’s so blistering, the way Barker describes the butchering of the girl. It’s a brilliant book.” Read more...

Five of the Best Feminist Historical Novels

Flora Carr, Novelist

The Silence of the Girls is a 2018 book from the English novelist Pat Barker. Much like Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Barker’s book recounts The Iliad chiefly from another perspective—that of Briseis. Sentenced to be the bed-slave of Achilles, the man who slaughtered her entire family, Briseis is stolen from Achilles by the sadistic Agamemnon. The chain of events that follows ultimately results in Achilles’ hostile exit from the Greek war effort, as chronicled in The Iliad. But although one would expect Briseis to be a central character within the epic, she seldom says more than a few words. Thus, in this modern retelling Barker gives us a new perspective on the Trojan War from a woman who has been consistently written off as a footnote within a man’s epic.

From our article Books like The Song of Achilles