Achilles and his captive Briseis in the book "The Silence of the Girls"

Pat Barker's "The Silence of the Girls" is a novel from Briseis' perspective, a former Trojan queen given as a captive to Achilles to honor him for his military accomplishments. Even after Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, took her away, the emphasis is still on the male characters; their motivations and reactions are brought to light. As a captive, she is being treated as less of a character but unfortunately a device, and Barker seeks to dispel the lack of narratives about this interesting character and bring to light her personality, her feelings, and her as a character, not as someone replaceable and overlooked.

Date Published: August 30, 2018

Book Overview, from Barnes and Noble:

A Washington Post Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, The Economist, Financial Times

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award Finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction

Here is the story of the Iliad as we’ve never heard it before: in the words of Briseis, Trojan queen and captive of Achilles. Given only a few words in Homer’s epic and largely erased by history, she is nonetheless a pivotal figure in the Trojan War. In these pages she comes fully to life: wry, watchful, forging connections among her fellow female prisoners even as she is caught between Greece’s two most powerful warriors. Her story pulls back the veil on the thousands of women who lived behind the scenes of the Greek army camp—concubines, nurses, prostitutes, the women who lay out the dead—as gods and mortals spar, and as a legendary war hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion. Brilliantly written, filled with moments of terror and beauty, The Silence of the Girls gives voice to an extraordinary woman—and makes an ancient story new again.

A critical review from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/books/review/silence-of-the-girls-pat-barker.html