Pompeii

Critics

• Under the volcano

  Robert Harris is being perfectly serious when he says he would rather have written The Thirty Nine Steps than The Rainbow. Harris is a novelist who comes from a supremely English tradition that begins with Defoe, surges pyrotechnically through parts ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• A blast from the past

  Pompeii by Robert Harris Hutchinson £17.99, pp342 Pompeii is set in a much warmer climate than Nazi Berlin, but it has one thing in common with Robert Harris's best-selling Fatherland. It borrows, for its momentum, the conventions of the police thril ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

• 1 person find this helpful

  

  The build-up is too slow, the excerpts from modern volcanology books total anvils. The author didn’t manage to make characters interesting or engaging. It was really hard work to read to the middle of the book when the plots kick in.

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  Vicky Pang said on Mar 28, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  Not bad, but I guess that I mostly managed to read the book until the end because I love Pompei, the town.

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  tam said on Jan 5, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  Harris's protagonist is the engineer Marcus Attilius, placed in charge of the massive aqueduct that services the teeming masses living in and around the Bay of Naples. Despite the pride he takes in his job, Marcus has pressing concerns: his predecessor in the job has mysteriously vanished, and anoth ... (continue)

  Harris's protagonist is the engineer Marcus Attilius, placed in charge of the massive aqueduct that services the teeming masses living in and around the Bay of Naples. Despite the pride he takes in his job, Marcus has pressing concerns: his predecessor in the job has mysteriously vanished, and another task is handed to Marcus by the scholar Pliny: he is to undertake crucial repairs to the aqueduct near Pompeii, the city in the shadow of the restless Mount Vesuvius. And as Marcus faces several problems--all life threatening--an event approaches that will make all his concerns seem petty.
  Robert Harris has produced an excellent, intelligent and spellbinding novel. He once again manages to mix suspense with intriguing historical detail, and sets his plot against the backdrop of one of the best-known events of human history – in this case, the catastrophic eruption of mount Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.

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  Lunarossa said on Jun 28, 2009 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Hardcover 342 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0091779251
• ISBN-13: 9780091779252
• Publisher: Random House
• Pub date: Jan 01, 2003
• Dimensions: 1484 mm x 1032 mm x 194 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Audio CD, Audio Cassette, Others and eBook
• In other languages: other languages 繁體書, 简体书, Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, Suomenkielisiä kirjoja

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