Natalie Haynes’s most recent novel, A Thousand Ships, told the story of the Trojan war from an all-female perspective. The one before that rewrote the Oedipus myth from the point of view of his wife (or mother) and daughters (or sisters). This new book, which is nonfiction, is an impassioned and informed study of the stories of ten notable women from Greek myth, from Pandora to Penelope via Helen, Medea, Medusa and the Amazons.
It is also a defence of the whole business of feminist retellings of Greek myth — and I am less sure how necessary that is. A Thousand Ships was shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a version of Antigone, won it in 2018. Madeline
