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Summary
Summary
From the bestselling author ofPraguecomes a witty, inventive, brilliantly constructed novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil. Just as Howard Carter unveils the tomb of Tutankhamun, making the most dazzling find in the history of archaeology, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancée's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Meanwhile, a relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. And another murderer. And possibly another murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable. Arthur Phillips leads this expedition to its unforgettable climax with all the wit and narrative bravado that madePragueone of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2002. Exploring issues of class, greed, ambition, and the very human hunger for eternal life, this staggering second novel gives us a glimpse of Phillips's range and maturity--and is sure to earn him further acclaim as one of the most exciting authors of his generation.
Author Notes
Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a failed entrepreneur and a five-time Jeopardy champion. He lived in Budapest from 1990 to 1992 and now lives in Paris with his wife and son.
(Publisher Fact Sheets)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
How was Phillips to follow up a debut as startlingly brilliant as Prague? By doing something completely different. His story, set mostly in Egypt in the early 1920s, stars Ralph Trilipush, an obsessive Egyptologist. Trilipush is more than a little odd. He is pinning his hopes on purported king Atum-hadu, whose erotic verses he has discovered and translated; now he must locate his tomb and its expected riches. Meanwhile, an Australian detective, for reasons too complicated to go into, is seeking to unmask Trilipush, who may have had some relationship with a young Australian Egyptologist who died mysteriously. Trilipush and the detective are two quite unreliable narrators, and the effect is that of a hall of mirrors. Where does fact end and imagination, illusion and wishful thinking begin? Phillips is a master manipulator, able to assume a dozen convincingly different voices at will, and his book is vastly entertaining. It's apparent that something dire is afoot, but the reader, while apprehensive, can never quite figure out what. The ending, which cannot be revealed, is shocking and cleverly contrived. Agent, Marly Rusoff. (Aug. 31) Forecast: It remains to be seen whether the admirers Phillips won for Prague will come out for something so very different, but Random is giving this title a big launch and it can be strongly handsold to readers in search of refreshingly original characters and situations. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A secretive archaeologist's obsession with an obscure Egyptian king uncovers several concealed histories--in Phillips's clever, labyrinthine successor to his prizewinning debut (Prague, 2002). In the fuller of its twin narratives, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush describes (via his journals and correspondence) his quest for the tomb of Atum-hadu, a monarch of the doomed XIIIth Theban dynasty--financed by American clothing store mogul C.C. Finneran. Trilipush is a grand mal eccentric and megalomaniac, whose translations of Atum-hadu's erotic "admonitions" (published as Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt) have scandalized and irked reputable fellow scholars. Is Trilipush a charlatan? That's the opinion of retired Australian private detective Harold Ferrell, who, as a nursing home patient in 1954, pens garrulous letters to the nephew of C.C.'s formerly opium-addicted partygirl daughter Margaret, to whom Trilipush had become engaged (though not for her father's wealth, as Trilipush's letters fervently proclaim). The two stories are connected by Ferrell's investigation of the disappearance of young Aussie Egyptophile Paul Caldwell in the very year (1922) and place where and when Trilipush was investigating Atum-hadu's (possibly apocryphal) history as emblematic of the classic "Tomb Paradox": attempting to achieve immortality by concealing all evidence that one has ever lived. This is a suave, elegant novel, replete with sinuously composed sentences and delicious wordplay ("brogue" as a verb; "claustrophilia" to describe Trilipush's pyramidal burrowings, etc.); it's reminiscent of both Angus Wilson's brilliant comic novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and Vladimir Nabokov's postmodernist masterpiece Pale Fire (Phillips plants a half-buried allusion to the latter late in the book). Alas, it's also intermittently labored and redundant. The mysteries of Trilipush's veracity and sexual orientation are endlessly worried, as is his hubristic rivalry with historical Egyptologist Howard Carter (discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamen). Nonetheless, Phillips's formidable research and witty prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly a major novelist in the making. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Phillips follows up his first novel, the best-selling Prague (2002), with an equally inventive if totally unexpected foray into ancient Egypt. The novel is artfully constructed in the form of letters and journal entries written by unreliable narrators, the primary one being erstwhile Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush. Obsessed with fragments of hieroglyphic pornography reputed to be the work of King Atum-hadu, Ralph talks his opium-addicted fiancee's wealthy father into bankrolling his expedition to Egypt, where he hopes to unearth the king's tomb. Meanwhile, his every move is being tracked by dogged detective Harold Ferrell, who thinks Ralph is not only a fraud but also a murderer. There are many funny bits about Ralph's tendency to romanticize all things Egypt and about his burning jealousy of Howard Carter, the real-life archaeologist who discovered King Tut's tomb; in addition, the novel's layered construction cleverly reveals the reality beneath Ralph's endlessly self-serving commentary. Some readers might find the amount of pharaonic minutiae tedious reading, but it all serves to support the novel's shocking yet entirely credible ending and its themes of the longing for immortality and the nature of identity. Phillips proves himself once again to be a wildly creative storyteller. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Having hit it big with his debut, Prague (set in contemporary Budapest), Phillips makes the natural transition and presents a second work featuring a 1920s Egyptologist who wants to uncover the tomb of an apocryphal king. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.