A Thousand Ships

A woman wakes to find Troy burning, and the ten years of war are over. In A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes retells the Trojan War from the side of the women and girls it swept up, rather than the men who fought it. The Trojan women face capture by the victorious Greeks.

An Amazon princess who fought Achilles for the city is remembered. Penelope waits on Ithaca for Odysseus, writing to him as the years pass. The three goddesses whose feud set the war in motion take their turn as well. The muse Calliope frames it all, telling these stories to a poet who is implied to be Homer.

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020.