I was recently asked to put together an annotated list of my personal favorites among Trojan War books. My list–with a limit of 5 books–is part of a new website called Shepherd. It’s designed to help people find books of interest.
Shepherd (as in book shepherd) describes themselves this way: “We ask authors to share their favorite books around topics and themes they are passionate about and why they recommend each book. We want to create an experience like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world.”
Choosing only five Trojan War books was, of course, challenging. There’s been a proliferation of excellent Troy books lately. I have to confess I ignored a couple likely choices simply because I hadn’t gotten around to reading them yet. So many books, so little time. It’s my perpetual problem, as I’m guessing it is for a lot of you.
But I had fun putting this together. I like talking from my heart in a personal way about books. Click here for Shepherd’s “The Best Books Set in the Trojan War.”
For longer, more formal reviews of some of these books, click on these titles:
Helen of Troy, Margaret George
Helen of Sparta, Amalia Carosella
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
A Song of War (multiple authors)
Here for a look at my Trojan War novel, Hand of Fire.
I would add The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, told from the POV of Briseis. A prize of war and the cause of contention between Achilles and Agamemnonm, she gets only a few lines from Homer, yet she is the cause of a pivotal moment in the Trojan war.
“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles . . . How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’.”
Barker’s take is worth reading and I’m glad you’ve mentioned it. I have to admit it isn’t one of my favorites, though. There’s a jarring contemporary tone as if she’s taken the premise of the Trojan War and reset it in a modern world. Sometimes in creating this “now” world feel, she uses cliched or trite imagery for situations that I’d like to resonate. I don’t feel like I’m “there” with this book, but her ideas about women and war are perceptive and challenging. She’s definitely tapping into the metoo moment in a passionate way.
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