Cassandra by Christa Wolf - so many different perspectives

Hello, I'm still reading the books that I was given for Christmas and a Greek retelling and you know I like my Greek myth retellings. This is Cassandra by Krista Wolfe and I can't think of any many other books that feature Cassandra who is the daughter of Priam the king of Troy and she's got the gift of prophecy but has been fated that her prophecies will never be believed. So she tells the truth but she tells what she sees but nobody ever believes her and this is her story and it's written as a stream of consciousness. I mean it's very difficult to see but there is not a single chapter break in there. It is Cassandra's stream of consciousness she's talking to us and so with all streams of consciousness you get weaving of different timelines. We start at the end we start when Cassandra is waiting for her death because she knows that she is going to die. After the fall of Troy she was taken back to Mycenae with Agamemnon and she knows that she is going to die in his palace. So she's waiting for her death, she's waiting for that moment and while she's waiting she talks about her life, she talks about everything that has happened to her and we have the story of her childhood, her story as she's growing up with King Priam, Queen Hecuba, her relationships with her brothers and sisters, the moment when she gets the gift of prophecy from Apollo and we have a relationship with Anais. Now I've never seen any, I think this is a fictional idea that Christa Wolfe has thrown in, you'll have to correct me in the comments below if I'm wrong, but I've never seen or heard of anything where Cassandra has a relationship with Anais in any other retellings but if I'm wrong stick it in the description box down below and tell me and I will apologise. But you have this fictional relationship between them as well and it's a fascinating look at the fall of Troy because in the beginning you don't have a wholly patriarchal society. Hecuba and Priam they seem to be working together for Troy but then when the war comes the women get pushed to one side and the men take over. The women lose their voices as you can say metaphorically Cassandra has lost her voice, she speaks but nobody hears her and you've got almost smoke screens as well in this war because in this story Paris takes Helen, he captures Helen from Menelaos but in this story Helen is not in Mycenae, sorry not in Mycenae, not at Troy. Helen is not there, it's a smoke screen. So the war has started for something that is a smoke screen. Menelaos is attacking Troy to get his wife back but she's not there. So it's almost a commentary on the war start for false reasons. The heroes in this book don't fare well. In Homer you've got golden haired Achilles, you've got all the epithets about how wonderful Achilles is. Here he's the beast and you've got layers that you don't normally see in other myth retellings. You've got a whole range characters as well. You've got a community of women who live outside the city walls, women from all areas of life that accept Cassandra and it's a wonderful joyful community even though the war is going on. And when you think about the author herself, she wrote this in the early 1980s. She is, let me just get this right, she's an East German author. So when she was writing in the 1980s the wall hadn't fallen. So is this a commentary on her own experience living in East Germany? Is she just trying to get a message across through this book as well? It's a very interesting and fascinating read this one because there's aspects of Cassandra and some of the other characters that I know from other retellings that I've not experienced in any other book. But yes, so Cassandra by Christa Wolfe. A lovely book, a lovely retelling and an exploration of different aspects of characters that you don't normally see. So happy reading. Take care. Bye.