Product Description

'I cannot wait to bring you to the plain of Troy. To show you the place where Hector and Achilles fought. To show you the palace of Priam. And the walls where the Trojan women watched their warriors in battle with the invader. It will stir your blood, Sophia.' Sophia Chrysanthis is only 16 when the German archaeologist Herr Obermann comes wooing: he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is tieing canvas sacking to her legs so that she can kneel on the hard ground in the trench, removing the earth methodically, identifying salient points, lifting out amphorae and bronze vessels without damaging them. 'Archaeology is not a science,' Obermann says. 'It is an art.' Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology - perhaps too good at it. The atmosphere at Troy is tense and mysterious. Sophia finds herself increasingly baffled by the past ...not only the remote past that Obermann is so keen to share with her in the form of his beloved epics of the Trojan wars, but also his own, recent past - a past that he has chosen to hide from her. But she, too, is very good at the art of archaeology ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #237500 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'A witty and ambiguous mystery novel from the always reliable
Ackroyd'

Times
`richly imagined work is as gripping as any thriller'

Sunday Herald
'Ackroyd has fashioned a gripping story about the dark passions which are unleashed when an obsessive personailty believes that an ancient text is to be interpreted literally'

Customer Reviews

Good but not great
This is the first novel by Ackroyd that I have read. Although I came with no preconceptions, I must admit that I was hoping for the "gripping and terrible" story, promised on the back cover. What I actually got was a mediocre story.

The book follows the archaeologist, Herr Obermann, whose passion for Troy and its legend seems to know no bounds - it posesses him and all that he percieves in the world. In deed, his passion is so large that he seeks out a Greek wife who is able to read the works of Homer. Sophia, his new wife is much younger than Obermann, but out of duty to her parents, and because she also has a great love for Troy, she agrees to the marriage and determines to make the best of it.
Yet Obermann's obsession with Troy slowly begins to take more of a sinister twist. He makes his findings fit his own theories, and when an American begins to question his work, he just so happens to come down with a mysterious illness.
As the novel progresses to its ending, Sophia aslo learns that Obermann has other, darker secrets that he is keeping from her - a secret that will ultimately lead him to his own destiny.

Ackroyd has done a good job at creating the character of Obermann. Although he is not very likeable, he is not two dimensional. Sophia, also is quite believeable - the word I would use to sum her up is 'dutiful'. Yet, despite this good characterisation, the story, for me, left a lot to be desired. The love affair seemed rushed and intangible; I saw it more as a way to help the ending along. Even the ending was an anti-climax. It was not the terrible and gripping ending that was promised; for a seasoned writer, I expected more.

Overall, this is an OK read. Good for a short while, but not something that will grip you from page one right up to the very end. Like archaeology, you may have to dig a little deeper.

Entertaining and quietly moving.
Hugely enjoyable. This book had the effect of reawakening an old fascination of mine with the Trojan material. Of course, Ackroyd is a great story-teller, and this one realy captures the feel of mid-19th century excavations on the hill of Hisarlik. The central character is clearly Heinrich Schlieman under another name, and the excitement and passion for the old stories held by that individual is convincingly and sympathetically done. The elaborations that Ackroyd adds, however, pique curiosity to the utmost, and it was these elements that sent me scurrying back to the archaelogical books to try to find out the truth. Read it -- it's short; and then go back to Homer and the rest. It's so good, I wish it all were true, especially whats at the bottom of the mound.

Disappointing
I was really looking forward to this book but was ultimately disappointed. Peter Ackroyd's fiction usually appears to be between 200 and 250 pages and his stories usually fit this perfectly (Lambs of London, Dan Leno both superb). It is almost as though the subject of Troy is too vast to fit and the story gets wrapped up far too quickly to satisfy. For the first 150 pages the story and the writing is great even though I thought the main character too much over the top to be believable. The constant references to Troy and scenes actually became tiresome and smacked just a little of assistants researches being liberally dumped into the story. The story and idea promised a lot but for once Peter doesn't seem to have pulled it off.