Author | Natalie Haynes |
---|---|
Audio read by | Natalie Haynes |
Language | English |
Subject | Trojan War |
Genre | Fantasy |
Publisher | Pan Macmillan (UK), HarperCollins (US) |
Publication date | May 2, 2019 |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback), e-book, audiobook |
ISBN | 978-1509836192 |
Website | https://nataliehaynes.com/books/a-thousand-ships |
A Thousand Ships is a 2019 novel by Natalie Haynes which retells the mythology of the Trojan war from the perspective of the women involved. [1] It was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. [2]
As a framing device, the muse Calliope narrates numerous stories from the perspective of the women involved in the Trojan War to an unnamed (but implied to be Homer) male poet. [3] [4] The women tell their stories with occasional interjections and commentary from Calliope, including Hecabe, Briseis, Andromache, Cassandra, Creusa, Penelope, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Laodamia and Penthesilea, as well as some female goddesses, including Oenone, Thetis, Eris, Themis, and Athena.
Haynes' motivation for A Thousand Ships was to illuminate women's stories in the classics. In an interview, she said "I knew I wanted to tell the women’s stories because they have been almost entirely overlooked. The characters are right there, in the shadows, waiting to be found. It was irresistible". [5] In another interview, she said "[t]he fact that women’s narratives have been historically overlooked is a tremendous result if, like me, you love these myths and have been immersed in them since childhood, and also want to write your own versions of them". [6]
In an interview with NPR , Haynes said that one inspiration for writing the novel came from a documentary about restorative justice in Rwanda following the Rwandan genocide because "I remember thinking, I guess justice is one way of describing this. It doesn't look to me like these women are receiving any kind of justice. It looks like they're having to tolerate what they're given because there's no alternative. That theme ran through writing A Thousand Ships for me". [7]
Haynes, who has written several other retellings of myths [8] and hosted a radio show about classics, [9] said of her work, "I’m just trying to show people that [the classics] are much more complex and interesting, filled with many more characters (women, obviously, for a start) and characters with many more stories attached to their names than we might know." [6]
Reviews for A Thousand Ships were generally positive, with reviewers praising the writing style and the feminist recentering of classic myths. Publishers Weekly called the novel "an enthralling reimagining" and wrote "Haynes shines by twisting common perceptions of the Trojan War and its aftermath in order to capture the women’s experiences". [10] Elizabeth Lowry in The Guardian wrote "[t]his subversive reseeing of the classics is a many-layered delight". [4] In The New York Times , Claire Jarvis called the novel "savvy and well plotted". [11] For NPR , Melissa Gray called the novel "a fresh and utterly satisfying feminist take on one of the oldest stories in Western literature". [12] In The Washington Post , Carol Memmott wrote "'A Thousand Ships' does more than acknowledge the suffering of women. It tells in lively fashion gripping tales of bravery, treachery and revenge". [13]
The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. [2] It was named a best book of the year by several publications, including NPR [12] and The Guardian. [14]
Briseis, also known as Hippodameia, is a significant character in the Iliad. Her role as a status symbol is at the heart of the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that initiates the plot of Homer's epic. She was married to Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus, until the Achaeans sacked her city and was given to Achilles shortly before the events of the poem. Being forced to give Briseis to Agamemnon, Achilles refused to reenter the battle.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda is a 1998 non-fiction book by The New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus were killed.
Patricia Mary W. Barker, is a British writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, The Observer named the Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels".
Eric James Shanower is an American cartoonist, best known for his Oz novels and comics, and for the ongoing retelling of the Trojan War as Age of Bronze.
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
Helen Oyeyemi FRSL is a British novelist and writer of short stories.
Natalie Louise Haynes is an English writer, broadcaster, classicist, and comedian.
There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.
March (2005) is a novel by Geraldine Brooks. It is a novel that retells Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists' absent father. Brooks has inserted the novel into the classic tale, revealing the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in 1862. The novel won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Clytemnestra, in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the half-sister of Helen of Troy. In Aeschylus' Oresteia, she murders Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had taken as a war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's Odyssey, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued.
Danielle Anne Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling novelist. She has been a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction jurist, and wrote the "Dark Matters" column for the New York Times Book Review for five years, from 2018-2023. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. Her novels have been translated into 33 languages.
Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad is a novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff, illustrated by Alan Lee, and published (posthumously) by Frances Lincoln in 1993. Partly based on the Iliad, the book retells the story of the Trojan War, from the birth of Paris to the building of the Trojan Horse. For his part Lee won the annual Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognizing the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject.
Madeline Miller is an American novelist, author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Miller spent ten years writing The Song of Achilles while she worked as a teacher of Latin and Greek. The novel tells the story of the love between the mythological figures Achilles and Patroclus; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.
The Song of Achilles is a 2011 novel by American writer Madeline Miller. Set during the Greek Heroic Age, it is a retelling of the Trojan War as told from the perspective of Patroclus. The novel follows Patroclus' relationship with Achilles, from their initial meeting to their exploits during the Trojan War, with focus on their romantic relationship. In 2012, The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Elliott Holt is an American fiction writer and former ad copywriter. In 2013, she published You Are One of Them, a novel based on the true story of Samantha Smith.
Emily Kate Johnston, who publishes as E.K. Johnston, is a Canadian novelist and forensic archaeologist.
Emily Hauser is a British scholar of classics and a historical fiction novelist. She is a lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter and has published three novels in her 'Golden Apple' trilogy: For the Most Beautiful (2016), For the Winner (2017) and For the Immortal (2018).
Stone Blind is a novel retelling the Greek myth of the gorgon Medusa. It was written by Natalie Haynes, a British classicist and writer. The book was nominated for best fiction book at the British Book Awards.