The Voyage Home - (The Women of Troy) by Pat Barker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy comes the powerful third installment to the Women of Troy series. - In The Voyage Home, Pat Barker skillfully reimagines Greek mythology, chronicling a perilous journey undertaken by the enslaved healer Ritsa and her cruel mistress Cassandra.

"One of contemporary literature's most thoughtful and compelling writers." --The Washington Post

"Readers will relish this fierce feminist retelling." --Publishers Weekly

I never saw Cassandra as a victim. I saw a woman as focused on a single aim as any raptor stooping to its prey; but then, I had more opportunities to observe her ruthlessness than most. I was in her power, you see. I was her slave.

Pat Barker has crafted the latest in a brilliant reimagining of Greek mythology, and The Voyage Home is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. In this third outing, she follows the young Ritsa and the unpredictable Cassandra on their perilous return journey to Mycenae. Cassandra has acquired the powers of prophecy from the kiss of Apollo, but the very same god has taken away the people's belief in her abilities. Though she warns of the carnage that awaits the Greek warrior king Agamemnon--who numbs himself with alcohol on the storm-plagued trip home--her shipmates disregard her.

While Cassandra's prophecies fall on deaf ears, Ritsa instead remains focused on surviving once they make land. When a mysterious young girl begins to shadow them, and Agamemnon's cruelty takes a new turn, Ritsa must find a safe place for Cassandra, whose mood alternates between cruelty and frenzy. But it's the ongoing ire between Queen Clytemnestra and Agamemnon that could prove fatal for everyone.

In The Voyage Home, Barker elevates myth and legend and asks us to examine the stories we hold dear through a feminist lens, and in doing so she has crafted a tale that upholds her legacy as one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Review Quotes

AN INSTANT UK BESTSELLER

One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction Books of the Year - One of the Financial Times' Best Fiction Books of the Year - One of The Times' Best Novels of the Year

"One of contemporary literature's most thoughtful and compelling writers." --The Washington Post

"Barker's vision of a world shaped by violence, a key theme in all her fiction, is equal to the tragic grandeur of ancient myth, and her insistence that ordinary people's sufferings be given equal weight with the woes of the mighty gives it a contemporary edge. More brilliant work from one of world literature's greatest writers." --Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

"Barker suffuses [her] wrenching narrative with the women's simmering contempt for the men who rule their world. Readers will relish this fierce feminist retelling." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

PAT BARKER is the author of sixteen novels, beginning with her masterpiece Union Street in 1982. Her Regeneration Trilogy novels, set in the First World War, were awarded the Booker Prize and praised as some of the greatest historical novels in British literature. Her novel The Silence of the Girls was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Gordon Prize in the UK and won the Independent Bookshop Award in 2019. She was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2000. She lives in Durham, England.