How does the author use flashback in the novel, A Thousand Ships?

There is no Trojan War without Troy, and so the city is at the heart of this novel. However, little time is spent there: for most of the narrative the city is little more than a ruin. Our first introduction to the city is when the victorious Greeks are burning it to the ground, and Creusa is fleeing for her life. The spectre of death pervades the flashbacks we receive of it from various characters: Priam and Hecabe failing to kill Paris despite being warned to do so; Creusa and her son Euryleon walking out of the gates in the belief that Troy has emerged victorious from the conflict. Everything that happens in Troy before the city’s fall is marred by the dramatic irony of its inevitable fate. Later as the Trojan women sit on the shore, the ruin that was once their home looms behind them. It is rare in a novel for an entire setting to be destroyed, and this terrible event tips the narrative into disorder and carnage.