Married at a tender age to the Spartan king Menelaus, the beautiful Helen bears him a daughter and anticipates a passionless marriage before falling in love with the Trojan prince Paris, with whom she flees to Troy, with devastating consequences.

"Trojan princess Cassandra is cursed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy, and must try to find her place in a world that she knows to be perilous; years later, will her friendship with a young Amazon princess named Rin help her to avert a disastrous end to their war?"--

"From the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy comes a monumental new masterpiece, set in the midst of literature's most famous war. Pat Barker turns her attention to the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War. The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen...

Held captive by the victorious Greeks, one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles' slave, forges alliances when she can with Priam's aged wife, the defiant Hecuba, and the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge.