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Pompeii

By Robert Harris

(53)

| Paperback | 9780099282617

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Book Description

Ancient Rome is the setting for the superb new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel.

Where else to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples. All along the coast, the Roman Empire’s rContinue

Ancient Rome is the setting for the superb new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel.

Where else to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples. All along the coast, the Roman Empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Only one man is worried. The engineer Marius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. His predecessor has disappeared. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’s sixty-mile main line -- somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Marius -- decent, practical, incorruptible -- promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. But as he heads out towards Vesuvius he is about to discover there are forces that even the world’s only superpower can’t control.

Pompeii recreates in spellbinding detail one of the most famous natural disasters of all time. And by focusing on the characters of an engineer and a scientist, it offers an entirely original perspective on the Roman world.


From the Hardcover edition.

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

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  • 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 | 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 | 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 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

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