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The Memoirs of Helen of Troy
Amanda Elyot
The woman behind the face that launched a thousand ships tells her own story.
Crown
November 2005
320 pages
ISBN: 0307209989
EAN: 9780307209986
Hardcover
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Historical
In
this lush, compelling novel of passion and loss, Helen of
Troy, a true
survivor, tells the truth about her life, her lovers, and
the Trojan
War. This is the memoir that she has written—her legendary
beauty still
undimmed by age.
Gossips began whispering about
Princess
Helen from the moment of her birth. A daughter of the royal
house of
Sparta, she was not truly the progeny of King Tyndareus,
they murmured,
but of Zeus, king of the gods. Her mother, Queen Leda, a
powerful
priestess, was branded an adulteress, with tragic
consequences. To
complicate matters, as Helen grew to adulthood her beauty
was so
breathtaking that it overshadowed even that of her jealous
sister,
Clytemnestra, making her even more of an outcast within her
own family.
So it came as something of a relief to her when she was
kidnapped by
Theseus, king of Athens, in a gambit to replenish his
kingdom’s
coffers.
But Helen fell in love with the much older
Theseus,
and to his surprise, he found himself enamored of her as
well. On her
forced return to Sparta, Helen was hastily married off to
the tepid
Menelaus for the sake of an advantageous political alliance.
Yet even
after years of marriage, the spirited, passionate Helen
never became
the docile wife King Menelaus desired, and when she fell in
love with
another man—Paris Alexandros, the prodigal son of King
Priam of
Troy—Helen unwittingly set the stage for the ultimate
conflict: a war
that would destroy nearly all she held dear.
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