Troy was adapted as an audiobook by Listening Library in 2002.  

German: Xanthe: eine Liebe in Troja, trans. Brigitte Jakobeit, Hamburg: Carlsen, 2008.

Danish: Troja, København: Forum, 2001.

Greek: Troia: mythistorēma, Athens: Hellēnika Grammata, 2004.

Serbian: Troja, Beograd: Laguna, 2007.

Turkish: Troya: roman = Troy, trans. Aslı Biçen, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yay., 2002.

Troy is a retelling of the final stages of the Trojan War, focalised through a group of young people living in the besieged city. Xanthe and Marpessa are sisters raised in Troy after being found as babies on the slopes of Mount Ida. Xanthe is nursemaid to Hector and Andromache’s baby son Astyanax, but also tends to wounded soldiers in the hospital she calls the Blood Room. She falls in love with Alastor, a wealthy young Trojan with an overbearing mother, who has been recruited into a war that he has no desire to fight. Marpessa is an attendant in the house of Helen and Paris, and helps Helen to weave her intricate tapestries. She rarely speaks, and can see the gods who move freely about the city and often reveal their plans to her. Xanthe is sceptical about her sister’s visions, and to punish her, Aphrodite arranges for Alastor to desire Marpessa. In the terrible hours after the death of Hector, they become lovers, and Marpessa falls pregnant with his child. When Xanthe learns of their affair the sisters quarrel terribly, and remain estranged as the Offering, the great wooden horse left behind by the Greeks, is brought into the city. 

The sisters have other friends in Troy. Polyxena is the granddaughter and carer of Troy’s Singer, the bard in the royal palace. She is in love with Iason, a stablehand who looks after Hector’s horses, who in turn is in love with Xanthe. Polyxena and Iason accompany the elderly king Priam to the tent of Achilles to ransom Hector’s body. When the Greeks sack the city, Polyxena and Iason manage to save some of the horses by concealing them in an underground chamber. Polyxena confesses her feelings to Iason, and the pair join with other survivors to bury the dead. Polyxena assumes the role of her dead grandfather, singing the stories of Troy so that they shall not be forgotten.

Geras writes into the gaps in Homer’s version of the story of Troy. The leading characters in Troy are all invented, and yet have plausible relationships with the traditional characters in the Trojan saga. Xanthe has a place within the royal house of Hector and Andromache, and her sister Marpessa works for Helen. Polyxena, the Singer’s granddaughter and next bard of Troy, feels it is a "misfortune to be given the same name as Priam’s youngest daughter." (p. 31) While we never meet the Princess Polyxena, the borrowing of her name highlights the playful way in which Geras engages with the established narrative of the Troy story. When Polyxena and Iason are instructed to accompany Priam to the tent of Achilles, Geras gives them a role within the famous events of the final book of Homer’s Iliad. 

The focus of the text is domestic rather than heroic, examining the experiences of ordinary people, women and children in particular, during wartime. The various romantic entanglements, both reciprocated and unrequited, convey the message that ordinary life goes on. But when the city finally falls to the Greeks, the brutality of conflict is powerfully revealed. Xanthe is so traumatised by witnessing the death of baby Astyanax that she loses the power to speak. The text records her feelings as a disturbing stream of consciousness without punctuation or formatting. 

The text also examines the power of storytelling, self-consciously alluding to the enduring impact of the myth of the Trojan war through the suggestion that Polyxena will continue to tell the tale. As in Troy’s companion volume, Ithaka, the act of weaving is employed as a storytelling device. Drawing upon Homer’s references to Helen’s weaving, Geras has her depicting episodes from the war on her loom, including the stories of the Judgment of Paris and Iphigenia’s sacrifice. These episodes are distinguished from the main text using an italicised font, and begin with an account of the colours used for the major characters and elements in the tableau. In this way, the work is situated within the context of the mythic cycle, symbolically woven in to the fabric of the story of the Trojan War.

Blog Post, Adele Geras: Troy, The Trojan War Project, 10 January 2013, available at trojanwarproject.wordpress.com (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Eccleshare, Julia, Notes from an Accidental Career. The Guardian, 13 January 2001, available at theguardian.com (accessed: July 12, 2018).