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The Voyage Home

A Novel

Author Pat Barker
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Large Print (Large Print - Tradepaper)
$31.00 US
| $41.00 CAN
On sale Dec 03, 2024 | 384 Pages | 9798217014347
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy comes the powerful third installment to the Women of Troy series.

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.
AN INSTANT UK BESTSELLER

“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

“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
© Justine Stoddard

Pat Barker is the author of Union StreetBlow Your House DownLiza’s EnglandThe Man Who Wasn't There, the Regeneration trilogy (RegenerationThe Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize), Another WorldBorder CrossingDouble Vision, and the Life Class trilogy (Life ClassToby's Room, and Noonday). She lives in Durham, England.

View titles by Pat Barker

About

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy comes the powerful third installment to the Women of Troy series.

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.

Reviews

AN INSTANT UK BESTSELLER

“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

“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

Author

© Justine Stoddard

Pat Barker is the author of Union StreetBlow Your House DownLiza’s EnglandThe Man Who Wasn't There, the Regeneration trilogy (RegenerationThe Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize), Another WorldBorder CrossingDouble Vision, and the Life Class trilogy (Life ClassToby's Room, and Noonday). She lives in Durham, England.

View titles by Pat Barker