The Fall of Troy

Ackroyd, Peter

ISBN 10: 0701179112 / ISBN 13: 9780701179113

Published by Random House, 2006

About this Item

Seller Inventory # E-9780701179113-6-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fall of Troy
• Publisher: Random House
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701179112
• ISBN 13: 9780701179113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

Fakes, forgeries and plagiarism abound in Ackroyd’s brilliant historical novel, set in the 19th century during the excavation of the Bronze Age site of Troy.“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 he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is tying 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 . . .

About the Author

Peter Ackroyd (CBE) is a master of the historical novel: The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde won the Somerset Maugham Award; Hawksmoor was awarded both the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Prize; and Chatterton was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent historical novel was The Lambs of London. He is also the author of Shakespeare: The Biography and the Ackroyd's Brief Lives series.