Heinrich Obermann, a celebrated German archaeologist, has uncovered the ancient ruins of Troy on a Turkish hillside. He fervently believes that his discovery will prove that the heroes of the Iliad, a work he has cherished all his life, actually existed. Sophia, Obermann’s young Greek wife, works at the site carefully preserving the ancient treasures she uncovers. But Sophia soon comes to see another side of her husband. He is mysteriously vague about his past and the wife he claims died years before. When she finds a cache of artefacts Obermann has hidden away, her suspicions about him rise, feelings that escalate when a visiting archaeologist who questions Obermann’s methods dies from a mysterious fever. The arrival of a second, equally skeptical archaeologist brings Sophia’s doubts to a head—and spurs Obermann to make even greater claims about the evidence he has found and the profound importance of his achievements.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
"[A] book's worth of calculation is undone at the end when Ackroyd raises hallowed dust, but clouds the issues at hand." - PW.
"This is Ackroyd’s most exuberant novel for years…" - Daily Mail (UK).
"Provoking, unsettling, ingenious—and a delight to read." - The Guardian (UK).
"Written in clipped, precise, instantly recognizable prose, The Fall of Troy is a novel about opposites—of truth and deception, fact and fiction, history and romance, love and loyalty.…But however you read The Fall of Troy—as a love story and mystery told in Homeric style, or as a deeper meditation on the relationship between reality and imagination—Ackroyd the novelist re-emerges triumphantly from the mud of his excavations." - The Times (UK).
"[T]he novel pushes too many envelopes too far, concluding in a very nearly ludicrous farrago of shocking revelations, narrow escapes and what even Obermann's critics might identify as divine judgment." - Kirkus Reviews.
A fictionalized version of the life of archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) by the author of The Lambs of London, Shakespeare: The Biography, etc.
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