The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Haynes, Natalie. A Thousand Ships. Picador, 2019.

Haynes’ novel is divided into 43 chapters, each of which explores the perspective of a different woman or group of women associated with the Trojan War. These chapters are not assembled chronologically, and women enter and leave the narrative as certain themes and events are explored. For example, the novel begins when a poet calls upon Calliope, the goddess of poetry, to give him the inspiration he needs to begin his tale. However, this presumably occurs long after the events of the novel have taken place.

Creusa is abandoned to die in Troy while her husband, the Trojan hero Aeneas, and their son Euryleon, flee the city. The next day, the surviving women of the Trojan royal family huddle together on the shore outside the ruined city: Hecabe, the former queen, her daughters Polyxena and Cassandra, and her daughter-in-law Andromache, wife of Hector. Earlier Theano, another Trojan woman, and her husband Antenor saved their lives, and the life of their daughter Crino, by opening the gates of Troy to the Greeks. The Trojan women remember the great Amazon warrior Penthesilea who died fighting against Achilles.Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus, writes her husband a letter asking him to come home after ten long years of war. The Trojan women discuss the abduction of Chryseis and Briseis who become the slave girls of Agamemnon and Achilles respectively. Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, dies in battle, followed by Achilles himself.

Briseis does not weep for Achilles when he dies, but his mother Thetis, a sea nymph, does. Her mortal son is now lost to her forever. The Trojan women do not mourn Achilles, in particular Hecabe, who believes him to have been a natural born killer. Yet someone who does mourn is Laodamia, who kills herself after the death of her husband Protesilaus, the first Greek to land on Troy and the first to be killed. Another woman doomed to die is Iphigenia, who is sacrificed by her father Agamemon at Aulis in order to propitiate the winds for the Greek fleet’s voyage to Troy. Back on the beach, Helen has joined the Trojan women. They at first blame her, whose abandonment of the Greek King Menelaus for Prince Paris of Troy precipitated the conflict, for the war, but Helen blames the goddess Aphrodite.

The Olympian goddesses Aphrodite, Hera and Athene ask Paris to adjudicate who among them is the most beautiful. Paris chooses Aphrodite, who in return gives him Helen of Sparta. Penelope recounts Odysseus’ defeat of the Cyclops. The Trojan women grieve violently when the Greeks reveal that Polydorus, Hecabe’s youngest son, has been brutally murdered. Oenone, nymph and wife of Paris, hasn’t seen her husband for ten years. Then one day he returns to her, mortally wounded and begging her for aid, which she refuses. The Trojan women discuss how King Priam and Queen Hecabe failed to murder their newborn son Paris after learning he would cause the fall of Troy. Penelope tells us that Odysseus is living on the island of Aeaea with the nymph Circe.

A few years before, Odysseus greets the Trojan women on the beach and listens as they tell him what has happened to Polydorus. Eris, the goddess of strife, decides to be revenged on the Olympian gods for not inviting her to the wedding of Achilles’ parents Peleus and Thetis. She drops a golden apple for Aphrodite, Hera and Athene to fight over; the apple is for “the most beautiful” among them.Odysseus informs Hecabe that she will travel with him to Thrace to visit Polymestor, the man who killed her son. On the Thracian shore, Hecabe duly blinds Polymestor and murders his sons. Penelope then tells us, many years later, that Odysseus has travelled to the underworld at Circe’s suggestion. He meets many dead women there, but is still far from his wife.

At Troy once again King Menelaus of Sparta, having reclaimed Helen, takes Polyxena as a slave. She is then sacrificed by Neoptolemus, who killed her father Priam, as a gift to Achilles, his dead father. Zeus, King of the Gods, approaches Themis, goddess of order, for help in starting a war among humanity to control their population. Themis has the perfect catalyst: a golden apple with the words “To the most beautiful” on it.

Penelope writes again, telling us that Odysseus, despite surviving the Sirens and the twin threats of Scylla and Charybdis, has been stranded on the island of Ogygia. At Troy the Greek herald Talthybius arrives to inform Andromache that her infant son, Astyanax, is to be killed. We then learn from Calliope, who keeps the narrative focused upon the women of the Trojan War, that the poet, like Polymestor, is blind and once had children. Cassandra tells us how she was cursed by the god Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy but robbed her of the gift of persuasion, dooming her warnings about the future to be ignored.

Gaia, mother earth herself, groans under the weight of humanity and asks Zeus to reduce their number. Penelope sends an ultimatum to Odysseus: he must return to Ithaca if he wishes to keep his throne, and his wife. Clytemnestra also awaits the return of her husband, Agamemnon, but shortly after he arrives she kills him in revenge for Iphigenia’s murder. In her final letter, Penelope gives thanks to Athene for bringing Odysseus home to Ithaca after 20 long years. Three women, the Moirai, spin and cut the threat that determines the span of mortal life.

Andromache finds some consolation in her new life as Neoptolemus’ slave. She has a son by him, Molossus, and when Neoptolemus is killed she marries her brother-in-law Helenus and founds a city with him. Calliope concludes her tale by telling how she has sung of gods, heroes and monsters, and also of the forgotten women of the Trojan War.