The Voyage Home

By: Pat Barker

Narrated by: Kristin Atherton

Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2024 Pat Barker (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

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)

Thank goodness Pat Barker writes sequences, as one book is never enough. The tortuous grief of mothers and daughters is the story of every war, and her retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan War grips our heart and haunts our dreams (Sarah Brown)