Synopses & Reviews
From the bestselling author of
Prague comes 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 made Prague one 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.
Review
"Highly recommended for everyone in search of buried treasure." Library Journal
Review
"What a splendid, funny, bewitching book....Beneath Arthur Phillips's singular wit and peerless comic timing, lies a spot-on parable of twentieth-century self-delusion and the painfully fruitless quest for immortality." Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Review
"[C]lever, labyrinthine....[A] suave, elegant novel, replete with sinuously composed sentences and delicious wordplay....Phillips's formidable research and witty prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly a major novelist in the making." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Phillips follows...Prague with an equally inventive if totally unexpected foray into ancient Egypt....Phillips proves himself once again to be a wildly creative storyteller." Booklist
Review
"This witty second novel plays with fire Pale Fire, that is by daring to appropriate the scheme of Nabokov's cleverest novel....Phillips is nearly as deft as Nabokov at parodying the academic mind..." The New Yorker
Review
"One piece of the mystery becomes obvious early on, but The Egyptologist is still an interesting, convoluted sort of puzzle....Phillips has missed an opportunity, though, to create a work that is more than clever." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
Review
"[A] wonder, a work of imaginative prowess that more than fulfills the promise of Prague. It's ambitious. It's inventive. It's challenging. And it's the kind of book that puts a writer's career on track..." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"[The reader has] to slog through a lot of details of Egyptology that are, frankly, on the boring side. The novel, which starts out with a great deal of charm and momentum, bogs down three-quarters of the way through." Chicago Tribune
Review
"[A] kind of brainy animated cartoon in novel form....Some of its contrivances are a bit wobbly, and none of its characters is wholly human, but it often verges on brilliance though it's inconsequential brilliance." San Jose Mercury News
Review
"While the book is too long and the artifice eventually gets to be too heavy, Phillips has successfully avoided the sophomore jinx and the curse of the mummy." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"The book is a little long on excavation details and Atum-hadu's life, but press on. The payoff is worth the occasional long-windedness. You'll be left to wonder: Where in the fictional world will that swashbuckling Phillips turn up next?" Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Phillips spices things up with a few post-modern twists in characterization....The Egyptologist requires a bit of faith and a lot of digging in places, but it finally yields up its somewhat morbid treasures in the end." Rocky Mountain News
Review
"Among the delights of Phillips' accomplished, exhaustively researched novel is its subtextual fascination with perception and the often willfully blinkered aspects of human interaction." Newsday
Review
"The Egyptologist, a novel very much worth reading, will certainly have its fans, but one suspects they will not be the same fans, or at least not fans in the same way, as those who loved Prague." Tom Bissell, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Who would have thought archaeology could be so involving? The Egyptologist is a tale as deep as it is tall." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
"Phillips' rollicking plot winds down to a finish both poignant and eye-popping not a combination one finds every day! His entertaining characters are believably two- or three-faced, and his phrasing is gorgeous." Detroit Free Press
Review
"[T]he reader is happy enough to keep reading, diverted by the characters' clever chatter and the author's zippy prose. But...by the book's midpoint, the reader...has begun to wonder why this novel is as long and long-winded as it is." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"The author deftly shifts back and forth among a half-dozen voices and styles....[T]he audacity of his creation [is] as great as that of his protagonist's, and the success of it even greater." Orlando Sentinel
Review
"Erotic hieroglyphics, a nosy Aussie investigator, and a shocking end make this one of the year's best." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"I'd be surprised if you didn't have the central mystery of this caper figured out somewhere before the halfway point. But here's the thing: I'd also be surprised if this bothered you too much. After all, when is the last time somebody made the effort to spin you a tale? When is the last time somebody wrote you a letter? When is the last time you encountered a contemporary writer with Phillips's far-reaching interests and easy facility with far-away places, far-away times?" Benjamin Alsup, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review)
Review
"Ancient Egypt and detective stories inspire a similar feverish obsession, and Arthur Phillips, in his new novel The Egyptologist, has a pretty good idea why. The novel, disguised as a collection of letters and journal entries, traces two stories, each woven from a mix of fact and fabrication, by two very different men....The real game lies in the slow revelation of why neither man can allow himself to understand the truth and how what we need to believe about the world often becomes more important to us than our own lives." Laura Miller, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
Review
"The Egyptologist is nothing like Phillips's bestselling debut, Prague, and yet it's full of all the dazzling talent he showed there. Presented as a collection of letters, telegrams, journals, drawings, scholarly analysis, and ancient (ribald) poems, the book opens like some long-sealed chamber of mysteries. But beware: Trust no one who's read this novel, particularly reviewers, whose damp breath and careless touch could easily disintegrate its wonders before you can enjoy them...." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of
Prague comes 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 fiancee'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 made
Prague one 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Arthur Phillips’s first novel, Prague, was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, recipient of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and has been translated into seven languages. Phillips lives in New York with his wife and two sons.
Reading Group Guide
- Why do you think Arthur Phillips used an epistolary structure for The Egyptologist? Would it have been possible for him to structure it differently? What effect do the letters and journal entries have on the voice of the novel?
- Early in the novel, Trilipush writes to Margaret, stating These writings are the story of my discovery, my trouncing of doubters and selfdoubt. I am entrusting to you nothing less than my immortality....If something should happen to my body, then you are now responsible...to ensure that my name and the name of Atum-hadu never perish (56). What drives his obsession with immortality? Explore Ferrells similar preoccupation with his own lasting fame, and how this theme pervades the novel as a whole. so h-
- What does Atum-hadu symbolize? How does Trilipush relate to him?
- In his journal, Trilipush relays three drastically different translations of hieroglyphs written by Atum-haduhe writes, Clenched and trembling men like Harriman and Vassal cannot restrain themselves from spilling educated and less educated guesses over barren, tattered evidence, producing great, pregnant speculations (90). What point is Phillips making here about history and truth?
- Describe Trilipush and Margarets relationship. Are they really in love? Do they have other motives for carrying on their love affair? How does their relationship change throughout the course of the novel?
- Explain the effect of unreliable narrators in The Egyptologist. At which points did you find yourself trusting Trilipush or Ferrell? What are each of their motives?
- Trilipush wonders, How did [Atum-hadu] know that his authority would endure to the last crucial minute, and that his world would then disappear a moment later, under the onslaught, before anyone who knew enough thought to disturb his peace? Somehow he did it, setting for us the most brilliant Tomb Paradox in the history of Egyptian immortality and preparing, for only the most brilliant and deserving, a discovery like no other (160). What is the Tomb Paradox, and what significance does it have? What is its equivalent in Trilipushs life?
- Explore the issue of self-delusion in The Egyptologist. What have each of the charactersTrilipush, Ferrell, Margaretdeluded themselves into believing? At what point does each of them come to their definition of truth, and what effects do their versions of clarity have on them?
- Trilipush writes, Despite my easy childhood, the men whom I admire most in this world are self-made men, a description which seems to fit the king (265). What does he mean by this? Has his own evolution followed that of a self-made man?
- On page 267, Trilipush explores the concept of three births. Explore the significance of this cycle and how it relates to the novel.
- Were you surprised by the ending of The Egyptologist? How does the tone of the novel change in the final scenes? How does your perception of Trilipush and what he has achieved changed?