Synopses & Reviews
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 sceptical 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.
In The Fall of Troy, Peter Ackroyd again demonstrates his ability to evoke time and place, and to transform history into compelling fiction. Like the Homeric epics that entrance Obermann, The Fall of Troy is in part accurate, in part fantastic. It is a brilliantly told story of heroes and scoundrels, human aspirations and follies, and the temptation to shape the truth to fit a passionately held belief.
Review
"A delicious working out of the theme of scientific fraud, this is a sophisticated, energetic, and learned work." Booklist
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"This is Ackroyd's most exuberant novel for years." Daily Mail (UK)
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"Provoking, unsettling, ingenious and a delight to read." Barry Unsworth, The Guardian (UK)
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"Written in clipped, precise, instantly recognizable prose, The Fall of Troy is a novel about opposites....[A] love story and mystery told in Homeric style." The Times (UK)
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"[Ackroyd's] evocation of the landscape, the weather and the conditions of the Hissarlik dig are brilliant, and his minor characters...are deftly brought to life." Sunday Telegraph (UK)
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"Ingenious...briskly told and vividly realized tale....[A] gripping novel." Daily Express (UK)
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"Like an antiquity that might be found among the stones, this book is a small gem in the impressive pantheon of Ackroyd's work." Library Journal
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"[A] sly, witty and oddly engaging novel that meditates on literature and idealism and the uses and misuses of both." Los Angeles Times
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"Ackroyd's most lauded novels tend to combine history and imagination, and The Fall of Troy is no exception." Christian Science Monitor
Review
"In telling Obermann's story, Ackroyd makes the astute choice never to allow the reader inside his hero's head....The novel is impressively lean; it never lags or bogs down." New York Times
Synopsis
Like the Homeric epics that entrance archaeologist Heinrich Obermann, The Fall of Troy is in part accurate, in part fantastic. It is a brilliantly told story of heroes and scoundrels, human aspirations and follies, and the temptation to shape the truth to fit a passionately held belief.
About the Author
Peter Ackroyd is the author of London and Albion; acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More; and several successful novels, including, most recently, The Lambs of London. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, The Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in London, England.