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Book at Bedtime: The Silence of the Girls: Episode 8

The Silence of the Girls

Episode 8

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, The Silence of the Girls, Episode 8

Frenzied by grief, Achilles devastates the Trojans on his return to battle.

In a frenzied killing spree, Achilles has returned to the battlefield of Troy and killed Hector in revenge for the death of Patroclus.

Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War.

When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis's old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

The Trojan War is known as a man's story - a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home and spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

In this historical novel, a brilliant and brutal retelling of Homer's Iliad, Pat Barker charts one woman's journey through the chaos of the Trojan War, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story.


In Episode 8, Achilles return to battle with one aim - to kill Hector in revenge for the death of Patroclus.

Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4

Book at Bedtime: The Silence of the Girls

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Pat Barker reimagines Homer's The Iliad from the point of view of Trojan queen Briseis.

Pat Barker reimagines Homer's The Iliad from the point of view of captured Trojan queen Briseis. Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon.

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