ALSO BY PAT BARKER Union Street Blow Your House Down Liza’s England (formerly The Century’s Daughter) The Man Who Wasn’t There The Regeneration Trilogy Regeneration The Eye in the Door The Ghost Road Another World Border Crossing Double Vision The Life Class Trilogy Life Class Toby’s Room Noonday This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2018 by Pat Barker All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2018. doubleday.com DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Excerpt from The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Copyright © 2000, Philip Roth. Published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited, The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Cover design by Emily Mahon Cover illustration: Engraving by Louis Charles Ruotte, drawn by François Gédéon Reverdin, nineteenth century, after an antique sculpture at the Vatican Museums. Bibliothèque Nationale. akg-images LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Barker, Pat, 1943– author. Title: The silence of the girls : a novel / Pat Barker. Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018014387 (print) | LCCN 2018015358 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385544214 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385544221 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Trojan War—Fiction. | Troy (Extinct city)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / War & Military. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | War stories. Classification: LCC PR6052.A6488 (ebook) | LCC PR6052.A6488 S55 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014387 Ebook ISBN 9780385544221 v5.3.2 ep Contents Cover Also by Pat Barker Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Part One Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Part Two Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Part Three Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Author’s Note About the Author For my children, John and Anna; and, as always, in loving memory of David “You know how European literature begins?” he’d ask, after taking the roll at the first class meeting. “With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.” And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. “ ‘Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles…Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon, the King of men, and great Achilles.’ And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It’s as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war.” —The Human Stain, Philip Roth