The stories in this novel are inspired by Homer’s The Iliad and Odyssey but here told by Calliope, the feminine muse from the ancient world. People can be wounded and wounding at the same time or at different times in the same life.” 'Survivors, victims, perpetrators, these roles are not always separate. In this writing she shows heroism can reside in everyone, not just men any more than the consequences of the tragic roles belong just to women. She justifies the story with the fact that war does not affect only half of the lives of the people it touches, and females are equal heroes. Natalie Haynes tells the same story through the female poet who sings of the forgotten, of women, the ignored, not just one woman or two, but of all of them. The blind poet Homer once told of armies of men, of gods, of monsters, of death and life, joy and pain, and life after death. 'A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts women, girls, goddesses at the center of the Western world’s greatest tale ever told.” Hers is not just the story of a mighty human or god but is a fiercely feminist story and question, 'Which is the more heroic act, the story of a man who loses his wife, or a wife who loses her husband and raises the son alone?” Natalie Haynes, a British classicist has written a story of the Trojan War as it affected women, not just men. Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian and short listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, A Thousand Ships is not the average retelling of Homeric Epics.

Book review a thousand ships