The Women of Troy
PAT BARKER
(HAMISH HAMILTON, 320 PP, £18.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.09 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Trojan women ... Afghan women. Is world history bookended by female abuse? Arguably, Euripides implied this when he wrote no fewer than three plays between 425 and 415 BC focusing on the plight of royal Trojan women who were enslaved after the fall of their city.

The possibly historical siege of Troy occurred in about 1200 BC. The Iliad and The Odyssey were written down by the Homeric composer(s) around 700 BC. Euripides wrote his plays about 300 years later. The long line of imaginative works inspired by these two foundational European epic poems continues, with Pat Barker’s novel being the latest – a mere 2,700 years after Homer. What enduring power there is in these unconventional stories of men and women undone by their love or hatred for one another.