The Silence of the Girls

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What to expect

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, read by Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox.

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the International DUBLIN Literary Award

There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . .

'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard
'Chilling, powerful, audacious' The Times

Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?

Critics Review

A searing twist on The Iliad… Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker’s stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion… Chilling, powerful, audacious

The Times

A stunning return to form

Observer

Angry, thoughtful, sad, deeply humane and compulsively readable, The Silence of the Girls shows that 36 years after her first novel was published, Barker is a writer at the peak of her powers

Irish Times

Its magnificent final section can’t help but make you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma… You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers

Evening Standard

An assured triumph

Sunday Times

An important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliad but at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, and at how anger and hatred play out in our societies

Guardian

She gives a voice to the voiceless…The Silence of the Girls is a book that will be read in generations to come

Daily Telegraph

An impressive feat of literary revisionism that should be on the Man Booker longlist… This is a story about the very real cost of wars waged by men… Barker makes us re-think history

Independent

Giving voice to the voiceless, this is a gripping feat of imagination that succeeds in being relevant today

Woman and Home

The most important novel based on The Iliad so far this century

Edith Hall

The magic of Barker’s book is that the resonance of giving silenced women a voice at the centre of the story is just as relevant today

Grazia

[Pat Barker] is one of our finest modern chroniclers of war…this magisterial novel is both a timely exploration of power, misogyny and violence and an elegant counternarrative to one of literature’s founding conflicts

The Guardian

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