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Published Jul 2014
544 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Based on a true story of discovery, The Visitors is New York Times bestselling author Sally Beauman's brilliant recreation of the hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings - a dazzling blend of fact and fiction that brings to life a lost world of exploration, adventure, and danger, and the audacious men willing to sacrifice everything to find a lost treasure.
In 1922, when eleven year-old Lucy is sent to Egypt to recuperate from typhoid, she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist. The friendship draws the impressionable young girl into the thrilling world of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter, who are searching for the tomb of boy pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.
A haunting tale of love and loss, The Visitors retells the legendary story of Carter and Carnarvon's hunt and their historical discovery, witnessed through the eyes of a vulnerable child whose fate becomes entangled in their dramatic quest. As events unfold, Lucy will discover the lengths some people will go to fulfill their deepest desires - and the lies that become the foundation of their lives.
Intensely atmospheric, The Visitors recalls the decadence of Egypt's aristocratic colonial society, and illuminates the obsessive, daring men willing to risk everything—even their sanity - to claim a piece of the ancient past. As fascinating today as it was nearly a century ago, the search for King Tut's tomb is made vivid and immediate in Sally Beauman's skilled hands. A dazzling feat of imagination, The Visitors is a majestic work of historical fiction.
"There are riches here, but it takes patience to unearth them." - Kirkus
"The novel isn't without its problems... but fans of the author's work, archaeology, or historical sagas won't mind." - Library Journal
"[A] beautifully written novel, a tale of intertwined lives that is at once powerful and haunting. Beauman maintains the tension surrounding the tomb's discovery." - The Times (UK)
"There is much to delight in this book…Nearly a century after King Tut's discovery, Beauman manages to make both the lives of her fictional characters and those at the historical center of Tut's unearthing riveting." - New York Journal of Books
"Interesting, unusual and informative, it is greatly enjoyable." - Literary Review
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sally Beauman was born in England, in Devon, educated at a girls' school in the West Country, and then read English Literature at Girton College, Cambridge where she graduated in 1966 with an MA in English Literature.
Immediately after graduating, she went to live in America for three years, first in Washington DC, and then New York. During her time there she traveled extensively, visiting most of the states in the union: her experiences in the South in the year prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King, provided some of the background for her first novel, Destiny.
She began work as a journalist on the then newly launched New York magazine, and continued to write for it and other American publications after her return to England. She wrote as a critic and reporter for ...
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