The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker review – a feminist Iliad

This brilliant retelling of Homer’s epic poem focuses on the cost of war to women through the story of Briseis, Achilles’ concubine

• Emily Wilson
• The Guardian

In The Iliad, a poem about the terrible destruction caused by male aggression, the bodies and pretty faces of women are the objects through which men struggle with each other for status.

The women are not entirely silent, and goddesses always have plenty to say, but mortal women speak primarily to lament.

They grieve for their dead sons, dead fathers, dead husbands and dead protectors; for the city of Troy, soon to fall, and for their own freedom, taken by the victors of war.

Andromache pleads with…

• The Silence of…