A Thousand Ships, a book by Natalie Haynes, retells the stories of the Trojan War through an all-female perspective and leaves the reader with more aching questions than you realised could exist, says Kavitha Murali
Our secondary school syllabus carried an abridged version of Homer’s Iliad replete with chapters dedicated to Achilles (notably, his heel), Odysseus (and a bit about his ten year odyssey), and a two pager on Helen of Troy (technically of Sparta). As I grew up, I learnt more about these Greek “heroes”, and the Trojan ones, notably Hector, adeptly played by the handsome Eric Bana in the film Troy.
A thousand ships isn’t about these people and men. Not so much about Helen either, over whom a ten year war was fought on earth, leading to the destruction of an entire city and the deaths of countless people. This book is about Hector’s mother Hecabe and Odysseus’ wife Penelope, it is about Achilles’ slave Briseis and her slave-time friend Chryseis. It is about Oenone, Paris’ wife, who is abandoned for Helen. It is about Cassandra with her cursed tongue, Andromache with her life on the edge and Iphigenia, the forever bride. It’s about wives who die for their husbands, wives who die because of their husbands and wives who kill their husbands. It’s about the women left behind, waiting behind the walls of Troy, waiting in faraway Ithaca, captured as slaves, beheaded as offerings to the gods, the list goes on.
Penelope gets the most air time in the book, possibly because she suffers the longest, through the ten year war and Odysseus’ ten year drive home. The man stops at many places, battling monsters and giants, sleeping with nymphs and goddesses. Penelope’s life through those years, written as letters to her husband, is the wittiest and funniest segment of the book, tragicomic though it is. The rest of the book is, well, just tragic.
If mythology is your cup of tea, pick this book. If feminism is your cup of tea, pick this book. Either way, you will be left deeply satisfied but with more aching questions than you realised could exist at the beginning of the book. For, this is the Iliad on the women.