The Fall of Troy: A Novel

Ackroyd, Peter

ISBN 10: 0385522908 / ISBN 13: 9780385522908

Published by Nan A. Talese, 2007

About this Item

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Seller Inventory # 00080470118

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fall of Troy: A Novel
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385522908
• ISBN 13: 9780385522908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

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.

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.