The Voyage Home

Author Pat Barker
Narrator Kristin Atherton
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 22 August 2024
Run Time 9 hours and 37 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Historical fiction, Myths and Legends, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The exhilarating follow-up to Pat Barker's The Women of Troy and The Silence of the Girls

After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle.

Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come.

Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts.

As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever.

Praise for Pat Barker:

'Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation' Sunday Telegraph

'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature' Independent

'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human' Herald

'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world' Guardian

©2024 Pat Barker (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Brilliant, masterful, strikingly accomplished . . . few come close to matching the sharp perspicacity and profound humanity of Pat Barker . . . this bloody tale has reverberated down the ages. With her characteristic blend of brusque wisdom and piercing compassion, Barker remakes it for our times

Guardian

Stirring and colourful . . . Barker has a genius for world-building. Ritsa is our viewpoint into an ancient civilisation brought carefully to life

Financial Times

A remarkable series of novels . . . Pat Barker’s Trojan War books are a visceral experience, made all the more affecting for being told from the perspective of the women involved rather than the warriors and gods we’re used to

Irish Independent

Rich and electrifying . . . The Voyage Home’s storytelling is focused, propulsive and firmly contemporary, plotting a gripping route through Homer’s source material to expose the ripple effects of male violence and destruction

Extremely gory and surprisingly funny, with plenty of gruff wit . . . Few living British novelists write as well about the collateral damage of war as Pat Barker. The Voyage Home is the third novel in her brilliantly subversive and ever-relevant reimagining of The Iliad . . . and it shows how a Bronze Age story can hold up a mirror to the inequities of our modern world

The Times, 'Best Novels of 2024'

A gritty Greek Game of Thrones . . . Agamemnon’s fateful return home reads like a blockbuster in the colourful third instalment of Barker’s women-centred Trojan wars series

Observer

A novelist matchless in her imaginative and informed response to war

Times Literary Supplement

The Voyage Home brings forgotten female characters into sharp psychological focus. It is astonishingly fresh and modern, bristling with anger, and breezily quick to read. Pat Barker is one of the finest novelists working today

Alice Winn

In her thrilling retelling of the stories of Cassandra and Clytemnestra, Barker conjures up a world stained by the grief of mothers and daughters. Agamemnon’s palace is the stuff of nightmares, a world of suspicion and fear, plagued by the ghosts of innocents

Paula Hawkins

A tale for our time, wonderfully written . . . The Voyage Home lays out the contingency of power: how fickle it is, how readily it ditches its host and moves elsewhere. It lays out both the banality of evil, and the grace that appears in the lives of everyday people

The Conversation

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