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Pompeii

A Novel

By Robert Harris

(52)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780345475671

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Book Description

All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, HerculaneContinue

All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. 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.

But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius 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 of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. 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.

Attilius—decent, practical, and incorruptible—promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him.

With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, bestselling author of Archangel and Fatherland, re-creates a world on the brink of disaster.


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 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 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

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9780345475671 Mass Market Paperback $7.99 $7.19 bn.com
$7.99 $6.74 The Book Depository
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