Product Description

The Roman Empire is the setting for the stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2493 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-27
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Certain thriller writers burst upon the scene with considerable impact: Forsyth with The Day of the Jackal, Cruz Smith with Gorky Park and Robert Harris with the masterly Fatherland. Interestingly, of these three authors, by far the most consistent has been Harris, and his new novel, Pompeii is in some ways his most audacious offering yet, a brilliantly orchestrated thriller-cum-historical recreation that plays outrageous tricks with the reader's expectations.

As in the equally adroit Enigma, Harris takes a familiar historical event (there, the celebrated code-breakers at Bletchley Park, here the volcanic obliteration of an Italian city in AD79) and seamlessly weaves a characteristically labyrinthine plot in and around the existing facts. But that's not all he does here: few novelists who (unlike Harris) make a speciality of ancient history for their setting pull off the sense of period quite as impressively as the author does here. As the famous catastrophe approaches, we are pleasurably immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the Ancient World, each detail conjured with jaw-dropping verisimilitude.

Harris's protagonist is the engineer Marcus Attilius, placed in charge of the massive aqueduct that services the teeming masses living in and around the Bay of Naples. Despite the pride he takes in his job, Marcus has pressing concerns: his predecessor in the job has mysteriously vanished, and another task is handed to Marcus by the scholar Pliny: he is to undertake crucial repairs to the aqueduct near Pompeii, the city in the shadow of the restless Mount Vesuvius. And as Marcus faces several problems--all life threatening--an event approaches that will make all his concerns seem petty.

Other writers have placed narratives in the shadow of this most famous of volcanic cataclysms, but Harris triumphantly ensures that his characters' individual dramas are not dwarfed by implacable nature; Marcus is a vividly drawn hero: complex, conflicted and a canny synthesis of modern and ancient mindsets. Some may wish that Harris might return to something closer to our time in his next novel, but few who take this trip into a dangerous past will be able to resist Harris's spellbinding historical saga. --Barry Forshaw

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
`Blazingly exciting… It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly enjoyable thriller read.'

Tom Holland, Daily Telegraph
`Britain's leading thriller writer… Explosive stuff, indeed - and yes, it goes with a bang'

Customer Reviews

A fun history lesson
It's been a few years since I read any Harris and this proves that he is still a fine writer to me. Here he succeeds quite well in weaving a unique plot around the volcanic eruption of 78AD. Quite why he used an Aquarius beats me (an ancient roman water mains manager type). I have given him 3 stars and not 4 for this, for the simple reason that it took overly long in my opinion to get to the real action. In saying that, as another reviewer has said, Harris still makes the historical lessons interesting.

It's just ok.
I prefer fact to fiction, so I approached Pompeii, thinking it was a compromise and an opportunity to broaden my tastes. While some of the writing is descriptive and colourful, the characters I found to be rather bland and rigid. Rarely, do any of them do anything that is unpredictable, challenging or thought provoking.

By all accounts, Harris's Roman research is accurate but because the story is really a plot between mainly fictitious characters, the research and the ensuing presentation of facts, is really only for a backdrop to form an outer context for the plot.

One character, Pliny of course, is historic and did exist, but I found his role in the plot irritating because the role was obviously fictitious. In fact, I find a lot of "based on fact" stories, books, films irritating because there is always poetic license taken with bits here and there. The distortion of the truth - if you take your truth and fact seriously - can make it even harder to achieve suspension of disbelief which of course is necessary to enjoy any work of fiction.

Man versus volcano
Reading this novel, one is reminded of the classic Monty Python scene in' Life of Brian' where when asked "What have the Romans done for us?" one of the rebels answers "Aquaducts." Harris' impressive research teaches us all about them set against the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79.
Pompeii itself is rather a minor character in this thinly plotted story.
Enjoyable enough but ultimately forgettable.