The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker torrent

Category: Adults, Historical Fiction
Language: EnglishKeywords: 12-1100BC Achilles Agamemnon Briseis Greece Iliad Troy War
Written by Pat Barker
Read by Kristin Atherton, Michael Fox
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: September 5, 2018
Duration: 10:44:45
One of The Washington Post’s 50 Most Notable Books of 2018
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2018
One of Vanity Fair’s Best Fall Books of 2018
“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.”
—Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey
Pat Barker turns her attention to the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.
“Great Achilles, Brilliant Achilles, Shining Achilles, godlike Achilles…How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things: we called him “the butcher.”
The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman watches and waits for the war’s outcome: Briseis. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and cooly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position to observe the two men driving the Greek forces in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate, not only of Briseis’s people, but also of the ancient world at large.
Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis’s perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker’s latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.
This extraordinary collaboration between the Booker Prize-winning novelist Pat Barker and superb narrators Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox reimagines the passionate, bloody, mythic Trojan War of Homer’s ILIAD. Once begun, you will want to abandon everything to spend time with Fox’s “Great” Achilles (aka The Butcher) and Atherton’s Briseis, a Trojan queen become his bed-slave. Barker’s vivid rendering summons fabled names and nobodies to the mighty and petty human drama of Troy’s siege. Atherton, who carries most of the narrative, offers imaginative, vivid characterizations and narrates in a fervent, crisp, fierce voice as Briseis balances the demands of men and gods with the needs and terrors of captured women. Fox’s chapters in Achilles’s educated, vehement voice are a perfect counterpoint. This is a must-listen. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: September 5, 2018
Duration: 10:44:45

One of The Washington Post’s 50 Most Notable Books of 2018
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2018
One of Vanity Fair’s Best Fall Books of 2018

“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.”
—Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey

Pat Barker turns her attention to the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.

“Great Achilles, Brilliant Achilles, Shining Achilles, godlike Achilles…How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things: we called him “the butcher.”

The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman watches and waits for the war’s outcome: Briseis. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and cooly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position to observe the two men driving the Greek forces in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate, not only of Briseis’s people, but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis’s perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker’s latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.

This extraordinary collaboration between the Booker Prize-winning novelist Pat Barker and superb narrators Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox reimagines the passionate, bloody, mythic Trojan War of Homer’s ILIAD. Once begun, you will want to abandon everything to spend time with Fox’s “Great” Achilles (aka The Butcher) and Atherton’s Briseis, a Trojan queen become his bed-slave. Barker’s vivid rendering summons fabled names and nobodies to the mighty and petty human drama of Troy’s siege. Atherton, who carries most of the narrative, offers imaginative, vivid characterizations and narrates in a fervent, crisp, fierce voice as Briseis balances the demands of men and gods with the needs and terrors of captured women. Fox’s chapters in Achilles’s educated, vehement voice are a perfect counterpoint. This is a must-listen. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine