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"From the author of Prague comes a novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil." Just as Howard Carter unveils the tomb of Tutankhamun, making the most dazzling find in the history of archaeology, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancee's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Meanwhile, a relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. And another murderer. And possibly another murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable.
448 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 23, 2004
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July 1, 2024
Oh, what a tangled web we weave!
THE EGYPTOLOGIST is an extraordinary, lush piece of literature that trots across the mummy-crazed globe of the 1920s and witnesses Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter's seminal discovery of the vast riches of Tutankhamen's un-pillaged virginal tomb. But, as in Caldwell and Thomason's THE RULE OF FOUR or Bondurant's THE THIRD TRANSLATION, things are simply not what they appear and any expectations a reader may have when they set eye to opening paragraph are bound to be set on their ear.
The novel, arranged by Phillips as a collection of letters and journal entries, traces two initially unrelated story lines to their ultimate convergence and climax. While some readers may find this epistolary format disconcerting, even off-putting, the more astute reader will rapidly come to realize that Phillips has carefully chosen this method of narration because truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder (or mouth of the writer in this case). Every word of the novel is important and it is left to the bemused reader to separate fact from fiction or embellishment and mis-remembered half-truth.
The first tale involves Ralph Trilipush (an anagram of Arthur Phillips for those that are into arcane neat stuff like that)! Ralph is an obsessive archeologist searching for the apocryphal tomb of Atum Hadu - the hotly disputed but definitely over-sexed final king of Egypt's XIIIth dynasty who has bequeathed to the world a set of very spicy, pornographic quatrains! Ralph's expeditions are financed by Chester Crawford Finneran, a stupidly wealthy Bostonian business baron, and father to Ralph's fiancee, Margaret Finneran, an irresponsible, flighty 1920s flapper who is likely hooked on opium.
The second story is told by Harold Ferrell, a hard-boiled, cynical and world weary Australian gumshoe, hired to track down the illegitimate children of a wealthy Brit who wants to do right by his will. When it appears that one of these children, Paul Caldwell, has met an untimely end at the hands of a murderer during a World War I posting to Egypt, further digging puts Ferrell onto Trilipush. Ferrell, convinced that Trilipush is a mountebank, a scam artist, a con and a murderer, need only travel to Egypt to apprehend the brute and add the finishing brush strokes to the canvas of a career-making case - an obvious testament to his skills as an outstanding sleuth and judge of character! (Yeah, right!)
That both men are utterly wrong - Trilipush in his epic fantasies about Atum Hadu and Ferrell in his conclusions about Trilipush's machinations - will be obvious to all readers well before the half-way point of the novel. But the manner in which Phillips leads the reader to drawing the correct conclusions without ever actually writing them down is masterful. The humour ranges from side-splitting, graphic, physical Vaudevillian gags to deeply tragic, black irony. Sarcasm abounds - witness Paul Caldwell's hard-biting, irreverent response to a Catholic priest who would chastise him for his fascination with the Egyptian culture of death - "Right you are, Father. Much better to stick with the life-embracing imagery of a cult that worships a bleeding corpse nailed to bits of wood." Descriptive writing, although it occurs all too infrequently, is compelling. Trilipush, for example, waxes poetic over the beauty of Egyptian women, "those caramelized confections, dark-irised behind long lashes".
The reader who patiently reads through what is certainly an overextended development of the story in the central part of the novel and reaches the conclusion that, sadly, is finished all too quickly will reap the rich reward of a truly fine piece of literature.
Paul Weiss
THE EGYPTOLOGIST is an extraordinary, lush piece of literature that trots across the mummy-crazed globe of the 1920s and witnesses Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter's seminal discovery of the vast riches of Tutankhamen's un-pillaged virginal tomb. But, as in Caldwell and Thomason's THE RULE OF FOUR or Bondurant's THE THIRD TRANSLATION, things are simply not what they appear and any expectations a reader may have when they set eye to opening paragraph are bound to be set on their ear.
The novel, arranged by Phillips as a collection of letters and journal entries, traces two initially unrelated story lines to their ultimate convergence and climax. While some readers may find this epistolary format disconcerting, even off-putting, the more astute reader will rapidly come to realize that Phillips has carefully chosen this method of narration because truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder (or mouth of the writer in this case). Every word of the novel is important and it is left to the bemused reader to separate fact from fiction or embellishment and mis-remembered half-truth.
The first tale involves Ralph Trilipush (an anagram of Arthur Phillips for those that are into arcane neat stuff like that)! Ralph is an obsessive archeologist searching for the apocryphal tomb of Atum Hadu - the hotly disputed but definitely over-sexed final king of Egypt's XIIIth dynasty who has bequeathed to the world a set of very spicy, pornographic quatrains! Ralph's expeditions are financed by Chester Crawford Finneran, a stupidly wealthy Bostonian business baron, and father to Ralph's fiancee, Margaret Finneran, an irresponsible, flighty 1920s flapper who is likely hooked on opium.
The second story is told by Harold Ferrell, a hard-boiled, cynical and world weary Australian gumshoe, hired to track down the illegitimate children of a wealthy Brit who wants to do right by his will. When it appears that one of these children, Paul Caldwell, has met an untimely end at the hands of a murderer during a World War I posting to Egypt, further digging puts Ferrell onto Trilipush. Ferrell, convinced that Trilipush is a mountebank, a scam artist, a con and a murderer, need only travel to Egypt to apprehend the brute and add the finishing brush strokes to the canvas of a career-making case - an obvious testament to his skills as an outstanding sleuth and judge of character! (Yeah, right!)
That both men are utterly wrong - Trilipush in his epic fantasies about Atum Hadu and Ferrell in his conclusions about Trilipush's machinations - will be obvious to all readers well before the half-way point of the novel. But the manner in which Phillips leads the reader to drawing the correct conclusions without ever actually writing them down is masterful. The humour ranges from side-splitting, graphic, physical Vaudevillian gags to deeply tragic, black irony. Sarcasm abounds - witness Paul Caldwell's hard-biting, irreverent response to a Catholic priest who would chastise him for his fascination with the Egyptian culture of death - "Right you are, Father. Much better to stick with the life-embracing imagery of a cult that worships a bleeding corpse nailed to bits of wood." Descriptive writing, although it occurs all too infrequently, is compelling. Trilipush, for example, waxes poetic over the beauty of Egyptian women, "those caramelized confections, dark-irised behind long lashes".
The reader who patiently reads through what is certainly an overextended development of the story in the central part of the novel and reaches the conclusion that, sadly, is finished all too quickly will reap the rich reward of a truly fine piece of literature.
Paul Weiss
March 19, 2014
Recommended for Nabokov fans, amateur archeologists, opium addicts, people who address each other as “Ducks”.
The old “unreliable narrator” gambit. Taking the book as a whole, it’s easy to dismiss this book as a failed attempt at pulling off the conceit. As I was reading, it held together until about the final quarter of the book.
This is a funny, engaging book whose parts are better than the finished product and ultimately a engaging commentary on immortality and madness.
The old “unreliable narrator” gambit. Taking the book as a whole, it’s easy to dismiss this book as a failed attempt at pulling off the conceit. As I was reading, it held together until about the final quarter of the book.
This is a funny, engaging book whose parts are better than the finished product and ultimately a engaging commentary on immortality and madness.
March 27, 2008
Fantastic book! One that operates on so many levels... Character study; satire; mystery/thriller. An Egyptologist goes off to find some legendary tomb shortly after WWI. Through his correspondence with his fiance (the daughter of his financier), we learn much about the man--maybe more than he would like us to know. Thirty years later, another set of correspondence from a provate investigator throws a different light on the situation.
This is one of those books that gets me wondering how on earth the writer could ever hold together the disparate threads of the novel. It's so well crafted, it hangs together so neatly despite all the red herrings and (intentional) confusion set in the reader's path. Well, I'm impressed. It's funny too, in a head-shaking, oh-my-God-no kind of way.
This is one of those books that gets me wondering how on earth the writer could ever hold together the disparate threads of the novel. It's so well crafted, it hangs together so neatly despite all the red herrings and (intentional) confusion set in the reader's path. Well, I'm impressed. It's funny too, in a head-shaking, oh-my-God-no kind of way.
January 16, 2012
I heart unreliable narrators, and this book is full of 'em. Set in 1922, it tells the tale of Ralph Trilipush's quest to find the tomb of an apocryphal king/erotic poet named Atum-hadu (which translates to Atum-Is-Aroused). Amusingly, his expedition is concurrent with Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of King Tut.
The story is mostly in the form of Ralph's journal, which he is specifically writing to document his findings to be published as a book. He also adds in loving messages to his fiancée in Boston, to whom he has sent his journal—we discover in the beginning—in case of his untimely demise. Meanwhile, thirty years in the future, Harold Ferrell, an Australian detective, is documenting for posterity a case that eventually involves Ralph, a case he can only describe as one that "started as an odd-duck inheritance case, then it was a missing-person case with a dozen different clients, then a double murder, a prenuptial background investigation, then a debt-collection case, and suddenly quite a different double murder." Finally, there are a few other letters to round out the story.
Now, Ralph Trilipush basically has no redeeming qualities. He's self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, and self-deluding, but what he is not is self-aware. Which is good for us because he is also a lying sack of shit (Dude! You're not allowed to lie to your own diary! A— Are you?). Talk about your unreliable narrators, holy Jesus Christ. You get a taste of this when, early on, he writes his biography for the book and includes things that haven't happened yet. It's hilarious. You quickly learn that you shouldn't take everything he says at face value, but the problem is you don't know what you can! Because he's so convincing, and you want to believe him, even when you're sure he's not being entirely truthful. You welcome other perspectives with corroborating evidence.
But Ferrell isn't a shimmering fountain of veracity either. Although you can trust him more than Trilipush, he, too, has his mind set on publishing his story, so he gets a little creative with the details sometimes. Like, say, putting people in his tale that hadn't even been born yet. For flavor. It's hilarious. Unlike Ralph, though, he's at least interested in other people, so we learn a lot more about the characters and who's involved through his investigation, even though we wonder how much of his conclusions are sound.
But this book is more than just an exercise in narrative gymnastics. Yes, it forces the reader to work for the real story, to read between the lines and filter out the truth from the lies, but that is the point. The narrative is so multilayered and the lies so complex that the lie of the BOOK is exactly the way to tell this story. Because the major plot is about an Egyptian king the academic world knows very little about. The only way we know anything about the Egyptian kings is through what they left behind, and the only way we know anything about Ralph Trilipush is through what he and others left behind. It's a story about primary documents told in primary documents. A story that, through its very nature, calls into question the very use of primary documents and what you can learn from them. In addition, the book discusses man's desire for immortality. Like the Egyptian kings, we want to be remembered centuries later, just as Trilipush and Ferrell want to be preserved in book form. It's a very funny book with lots of laugh-out-loud moments, but it's also very sad because as much of a dick as he is, you can't help but feel for Ralph Trilipush's desire to be remembered because it's so real and human.
It's a truly fantastic book, and Phillips's ability to capture so many different voices is admirable. Ironically, the major flaw of the book is that he's too good at being Ralph Trilipush, and his voice becomes tiresome and irritating after a while. You find yourself welcoming the voice of the more down-to-earth Ferrell. But the intertwining (unreliable) narratives make the story incredibly engaging: as People put it, "Readers will be crazed to get to the next page—not only to find out what happens next, but to find out if what just happened really happened."
Plus, you learn a bit about Egyptology! I don't think Ralph made up the part where Egypt is a real country...
The story is mostly in the form of Ralph's journal, which he is specifically writing to document his findings to be published as a book. He also adds in loving messages to his fiancée in Boston, to whom he has sent his journal—we discover in the beginning—in case of his untimely demise. Meanwhile, thirty years in the future, Harold Ferrell, an Australian detective, is documenting for posterity a case that eventually involves Ralph, a case he can only describe as one that "started as an odd-duck inheritance case, then it was a missing-person case with a dozen different clients, then a double murder, a prenuptial background investigation, then a debt-collection case, and suddenly quite a different double murder." Finally, there are a few other letters to round out the story.
Now, Ralph Trilipush basically has no redeeming qualities. He's self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, and self-deluding, but what he is not is self-aware. Which is good for us because he is also a lying sack of shit (Dude! You're not allowed to lie to your own diary! A— Are you?). Talk about your unreliable narrators, holy Jesus Christ. You get a taste of this when, early on, he writes his biography for the book and includes things that haven't happened yet. It's hilarious. You quickly learn that you shouldn't take everything he says at face value, but the problem is you don't know what you can! Because he's so convincing, and you want to believe him, even when you're sure he's not being entirely truthful. You welcome other perspectives with corroborating evidence.
But Ferrell isn't a shimmering fountain of veracity either. Although you can trust him more than Trilipush, he, too, has his mind set on publishing his story, so he gets a little creative with the details sometimes. Like, say, putting people in his tale that hadn't even been born yet. For flavor. It's hilarious. Unlike Ralph, though, he's at least interested in other people, so we learn a lot more about the characters and who's involved through his investigation, even though we wonder how much of his conclusions are sound.
But this book is more than just an exercise in narrative gymnastics. Yes, it forces the reader to work for the real story, to read between the lines and filter out the truth from the lies, but that is the point. The narrative is so multilayered and the lies so complex that the lie of the BOOK is exactly the way to tell this story. Because the major plot is about an Egyptian king the academic world knows very little about. The only way we know anything about the Egyptian kings is through what they left behind, and the only way we know anything about Ralph Trilipush is through what he and others left behind. It's a story about primary documents told in primary documents. A story that, through its very nature, calls into question the very use of primary documents and what you can learn from them. In addition, the book discusses man's desire for immortality. Like the Egyptian kings, we want to be remembered centuries later, just as Trilipush and Ferrell want to be preserved in book form. It's a very funny book with lots of laugh-out-loud moments, but it's also very sad because as much of a dick as he is, you can't help but feel for Ralph Trilipush's desire to be remembered because it's so real and human.
It's a truly fantastic book, and Phillips's ability to capture so many different voices is admirable. Ironically, the major flaw of the book is that he's too good at being Ralph Trilipush, and his voice becomes tiresome and irritating after a while. You find yourself welcoming the voice of the more down-to-earth Ferrell. But the intertwining (unreliable) narratives make the story incredibly engaging: as People put it, "Readers will be crazed to get to the next page—not only to find out what happens next, but to find out if what just happened really happened."
Plus, you learn a bit about Egyptology! I don't think Ralph made up the part where Egypt is a real country...
September 24, 2009
I considered giving this four stars instead of five, but I'm bumping it up because I think the Goodreads average is ranked low primarily for the "I don't like the characters" reason or the "I guessed the ending" reason, and frankly, while the characters are not all that likable, they are complex and surprising and highly memorable, and while I guessed the ending, I was still surprised by how it came about and what it all meant. The Egyptologist tells a story about the impossible quest for immortality in all its forms and the difficulty of gaining real understanding of anyone else. This must have been incredibly complex to map out as Phillips wrote it (it's an epistolary novel told from several points of view, and told in a way that feels chronologically fluid but really is not.) The best aspect of using letters and journal entries from multiple sources is that they create a tension from the reader being clued in to connections the other characters miss - consider in Dracula how by a certain point all a letter has to say is that a character has been feeling weak to conjure in the reader's imagination the dread-ful picture of the vampire descending on that character each night. By the end of The Egyptologist the vast majority of the story has been told through indirect inferences of this type. And while the unreliability of narrators makes you question whether they are lying, this book is not so ambiguous as to make you think there is no truth at all. This is the type of multilayered, thematically coherent story I have tried to write more than once, never as well as this.
August 18, 2008
A mild recommendation.
An interesting scenario told in a brilliant format, with a disappointing ending. The dust jacket (as shown here on Goodreads), boasts of an unpredictable ending, but I (not the brightest or readers) saw it coming for at least half the book.
This is a story of two men. The first is an Australian detective hired to find the lost, bastard, child of an English philanderer. The second is the Egyptologist, Ralph M. Trilipush, who is leaving his professorship at Harvard to find the tomb of an apocryphal king. Most of the story takes place just after the first world war.
I loved the method of Phillips' narrative, letters and journal entries. And, because I listened to it on CD, was overwhelmed by the brilliant narrators hired to portray the different accents and characters (that might be enough to justify listening to it). I spent a lot of time piecing together the different story lines and gaps in my mind as the story moved along.
There is a lot of commentary (from the Egyptologist) on the subject of the "self-made-man". No, not someone who makes their own fortune, but rather the man, who without any positive influence from parent or those he comes in contact with, makes himself into something worth admiration. I'll let you decipher, if you dare read it, Phillips' end conclusion on the matter. But I have to admit, it got me thinking.
With all of that said, I had unraveled the mystery sometime around the midpoint, and therefore felt like I was slogging through mud for the rest of the novel. Phillips' editors didn't do him any favors in not cutting the length as they should have.
The dark and sadist ending might have been enough to save the book if it hadn't dragged on so long.
A fun read, and it isn't a total waste of time (again loved the device of the letters and journal entries, and the brilliant narration of the audio version), but only if you're willing to slog through an easily solved mystery.
(Although mild, there is some sexual innuendo in the book.)
An interesting scenario told in a brilliant format, with a disappointing ending. The dust jacket (as shown here on Goodreads), boasts of an unpredictable ending, but I (not the brightest or readers) saw it coming for at least half the book.
This is a story of two men. The first is an Australian detective hired to find the lost, bastard, child of an English philanderer. The second is the Egyptologist, Ralph M. Trilipush, who is leaving his professorship at Harvard to find the tomb of an apocryphal king. Most of the story takes place just after the first world war.
I loved the method of Phillips' narrative, letters and journal entries. And, because I listened to it on CD, was overwhelmed by the brilliant narrators hired to portray the different accents and characters (that might be enough to justify listening to it). I spent a lot of time piecing together the different story lines and gaps in my mind as the story moved along.
There is a lot of commentary (from the Egyptologist) on the subject of the "self-made-man". No, not someone who makes their own fortune, but rather the man, who without any positive influence from parent or those he comes in contact with, makes himself into something worth admiration. I'll let you decipher, if you dare read it, Phillips' end conclusion on the matter. But I have to admit, it got me thinking.
With all of that said, I had unraveled the mystery sometime around the midpoint, and therefore felt like I was slogging through mud for the rest of the novel. Phillips' editors didn't do him any favors in not cutting the length as they should have.
The dark and sadist ending might have been enough to save the book if it hadn't dragged on so long.
A fun read, and it isn't a total waste of time (again loved the device of the letters and journal entries, and the brilliant narration of the audio version), but only if you're willing to slog through an easily solved mystery.
(Although mild, there is some sexual innuendo in the book.)
July 26, 2007
Imagine coming across a mound of papers scattered across a desk or perhaps dumped in a box. Imagine that these papers span decades and are letters, interviews, journals and other correspondence. Now imagine that the only way to make any sense of them is to pick up and read each and every page. Now you know what it's like to read The Egyptologist.
It's by no means an easy book to read. There are 416 pages of in a tiny typeface with no chapter breaks and no rhyme or reason to how the information is presented save for a slight thematic progression. At the heart of the book is the mystery of what happened to the Egyptologist, Ralph Trilipush, and did he find the Atum-hadu's tomb?
I have to admit struggling with this book. I'm normally a fast reader but I could only handle about ten or so pages at a time before I had to stop and think about what I'd just read. The ending which some reviewers on Amazon have said was obvious to them half way through, took me by complete surprise and was very satisfying for all the work I put into reading the book.
It's by no means an easy book to read. There are 416 pages of in a tiny typeface with no chapter breaks and no rhyme or reason to how the information is presented save for a slight thematic progression. At the heart of the book is the mystery of what happened to the Egyptologist, Ralph Trilipush, and did he find the Atum-hadu's tomb?
I have to admit struggling with this book. I'm normally a fast reader but I could only handle about ten or so pages at a time before I had to stop and think about what I'd just read. The ending which some reviewers on Amazon have said was obvious to them half way through, took me by complete surprise and was very satisfying for all the work I put into reading the book.
May 23, 2021
This is my second time reading this book and I think it's brilliant. I admit to being predisposed to it. I've read Howard Carter's three-volume work describing his discovery of the tomb of boy-pharaoh Tutankhamen twice too, never wanting that to end either. Here, Phillips gets it all right. What a perfect ear he has for the language, style, and cadences of that era. He captures it all, then turns it on its ear. The book is alternately witty, wise, darkly comic, achingly beautiful, wildly funny, deeply tragic. On the simplest level it is a take on the detective story, with a hard-boiled private investigator named Harold Ferrel pursuing the rather shadowy figure of Ralph M. Trilipush (the Egyptologist referred to in the title) across several continents. Along the way it becomes a kind of epic that charts an interior landscape of longing, love, hope, desire, deceit, self-delusion, self-determination. Ultimately it is a story about identity and imagination, and about creation - the act of willful self-creation - and by extension, I would say, about art.
December 19, 2009
To describe his frenetic creation Wile E. Coyote, the great cartoonist Chuck Jones liked to quote the philosopher George Santayana: ''A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.''
Ralph Trilipush, the title character of Arthur Phillips' novel ''The Egyptologist,'' is a bit like that. He doesn't get bonked with any anvils, but he has the Coyote's single-minded self-destructiveness, working himself deeper into a mess when the wiser course would be to cut and run.
''The Egyptologist'' is Phillips' second novel, and readers of the first, the clever and often wise ''Prague,'' are likely to be startled by his change of direction. His first novel, about a group of young North Americans in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, was acutely thoughtful about life and culture at the end of the 20th century. His second is a glittery, intricate entertainment, the work of a writer uncommonly skilled at creating intelligent puzzles. ''The Da Vinci Code'' and ''The Rule of Four'' have shown that there's a market eager for mysteries wrapped in ancient enigmas, so ''The Egyptologist,'' which is a better novel than either of those bestsellers, will probably get a lot more readers than ''Prague.''
You may already be wondering what sort of name ''Trilipush'' is, so let that be your first clue that Ralph, who purports to be an Oxford-educated archaeologist on the brink of an epochal discovery of the tomb of a previously unknown king of ancient Egypt, is not who he says he is. It won't take you many pages to figure out that he's some kind of fraud. What kind, and why and how he pulled it off, and what will happen when he's exposed -- this is what keeps you guessing and reading.
And the neat trick is that Phillips lets Trilipush (or whoever he is) tell much of the story. A large part of the narrative consists of the journal kept by Trilipush during his fateful dig in Egypt in 1922. The journal and other papers were packaged for delivery to his fiancee, Margaret Finneran, whose father, a nouveau riche Boston department store owner, bankrolled Trilipush's expedition. Trilipush explains in the journal that he is sending it to Margaret because he fears for his life and wants her to publish his account of his discovery. And he fingers as his potential murderer none other than Howard Carter, the real-life discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamen. (Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, appear as characters in the novel, and Phillips did a lot of research into Egyptology, but his fiction intersects with history only tangentially.)
But another side of the story is provided by the letters written in 1954 and 1955 by Harold Ferrell to Lawrence Macy III, Margaret's nephew, who after his aunt's death is trying to clear up some mysteries about her past. How Ferrell, an elderly Australian detective confined to a Sydney nursing home, once crossed paths with Trilipush is too complicated to explain here. Ferrell himself sums it up this way: ''It started as an odd-duck inheritance task, then it was a missing-person case with a dozen different clients, then a double murder, a prenuptial background investigation, then a debt-collection case, and suddenly quite a different double murder.''
But beware of relying on Ferrell's account of things. Most readers will guess Trilipush's true identity from what Ferrell tells us, but Ferrell keeps putting two and two together and getting five. He has delusions of grandeur to match Trilipush's: As he tells his story to Macy, the detective begins to imagine himself as Sherlock Holmes and Macy as his Watson. So what we have here is a tale told by a fool and a fraud.
I'm pretty sure Phillips is making some point about the ambiguous nature of truth, but for the reader the real fun is matching up what we know about Trilipush with what Ferrell thinks he knows about him. For even though Trilipush is a phony, he also believes he has made a great archaeological find -- which explains his antipathy to Carter, whose famous discovery is taking place in the next valley over. Trilipush goes into a frenzy, trying to convince his fiancee and his backers, not to mention himself, that he's onto something of importance. And the more unlikely this becomes, he only redoubles his efforts -- hilariously, but also lethally.
With Ferrell on the track of Trilipush, Phillips' novel turns into Coyote vs. Coyote. And you may wind up rooting for both of them for the same reason you root for the Coyote: You don't really want to see him get the Road Runner, but you can't help cheering him on in his violent futility. You don't want Trilipush to get away with the crimes he piles up, but you can't help admiring his perverse ingenuity -- or Ferrell's half-blind doggedness.
If you've gathered that ''The Egyptologist'' is a kind of brainy animated cartoon in novel form, you've got it. Some of its contrivances are a bit wobbly, and none of its characters is wholly human, but it often verges on brilliance -- though it's inconsequential brilliance.
Ralph Trilipush, the title character of Arthur Phillips' novel ''The Egyptologist,'' is a bit like that. He doesn't get bonked with any anvils, but he has the Coyote's single-minded self-destructiveness, working himself deeper into a mess when the wiser course would be to cut and run.
''The Egyptologist'' is Phillips' second novel, and readers of the first, the clever and often wise ''Prague,'' are likely to be startled by his change of direction. His first novel, about a group of young North Americans in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, was acutely thoughtful about life and culture at the end of the 20th century. His second is a glittery, intricate entertainment, the work of a writer uncommonly skilled at creating intelligent puzzles. ''The Da Vinci Code'' and ''The Rule of Four'' have shown that there's a market eager for mysteries wrapped in ancient enigmas, so ''The Egyptologist,'' which is a better novel than either of those bestsellers, will probably get a lot more readers than ''Prague.''
You may already be wondering what sort of name ''Trilipush'' is, so let that be your first clue that Ralph, who purports to be an Oxford-educated archaeologist on the brink of an epochal discovery of the tomb of a previously unknown king of ancient Egypt, is not who he says he is. It won't take you many pages to figure out that he's some kind of fraud. What kind, and why and how he pulled it off, and what will happen when he's exposed -- this is what keeps you guessing and reading.
And the neat trick is that Phillips lets Trilipush (or whoever he is) tell much of the story. A large part of the narrative consists of the journal kept by Trilipush during his fateful dig in Egypt in 1922. The journal and other papers were packaged for delivery to his fiancee, Margaret Finneran, whose father, a nouveau riche Boston department store owner, bankrolled Trilipush's expedition. Trilipush explains in the journal that he is sending it to Margaret because he fears for his life and wants her to publish his account of his discovery. And he fingers as his potential murderer none other than Howard Carter, the real-life discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamen. (Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, appear as characters in the novel, and Phillips did a lot of research into Egyptology, but his fiction intersects with history only tangentially.)
But another side of the story is provided by the letters written in 1954 and 1955 by Harold Ferrell to Lawrence Macy III, Margaret's nephew, who after his aunt's death is trying to clear up some mysteries about her past. How Ferrell, an elderly Australian detective confined to a Sydney nursing home, once crossed paths with Trilipush is too complicated to explain here. Ferrell himself sums it up this way: ''It started as an odd-duck inheritance task, then it was a missing-person case with a dozen different clients, then a double murder, a prenuptial background investigation, then a debt-collection case, and suddenly quite a different double murder.''
But beware of relying on Ferrell's account of things. Most readers will guess Trilipush's true identity from what Ferrell tells us, but Ferrell keeps putting two and two together and getting five. He has delusions of grandeur to match Trilipush's: As he tells his story to Macy, the detective begins to imagine himself as Sherlock Holmes and Macy as his Watson. So what we have here is a tale told by a fool and a fraud.
I'm pretty sure Phillips is making some point about the ambiguous nature of truth, but for the reader the real fun is matching up what we know about Trilipush with what Ferrell thinks he knows about him. For even though Trilipush is a phony, he also believes he has made a great archaeological find -- which explains his antipathy to Carter, whose famous discovery is taking place in the next valley over. Trilipush goes into a frenzy, trying to convince his fiancee and his backers, not to mention himself, that he's onto something of importance. And the more unlikely this becomes, he only redoubles his efforts -- hilariously, but also lethally.
With Ferrell on the track of Trilipush, Phillips' novel turns into Coyote vs. Coyote. And you may wind up rooting for both of them for the same reason you root for the Coyote: You don't really want to see him get the Road Runner, but you can't help cheering him on in his violent futility. You don't want Trilipush to get away with the crimes he piles up, but you can't help admiring his perverse ingenuity -- or Ferrell's half-blind doggedness.
If you've gathered that ''The Egyptologist'' is a kind of brainy animated cartoon in novel form, you've got it. Some of its contrivances are a bit wobbly, and none of its characters is wholly human, but it often verges on brilliance -- though it's inconsequential brilliance.
May 5, 2018
Ik heb het echt waar geprobeerd. 205 blz. om precies te zijn. Maar ik moet besluiten dat dit niks voor mij is. Een opeenvolging van brieven en dagboek fragmenten. Lange monologen met veelal informatie die niets ter zake doen. Het kan best dat mensen dit subliem vinden maar voor mij gaat het te traag, te weinig beweging in het boek. Vandaar maar 1 ster.
October 3, 2007
This book was so bad I'd be willing to burn it. The main character is repellent, the twist in the plot is apparent way too early, and it's generally vile.
November 17, 2013
Should you find yourself entombed in ancient Egypt, hope that your minions included a copy of Arthur Phillips's new novel among the gilded tools and ebony furniture. It'll make the time fly, and it's practically bright enough to read by its own light. "Yes, Ra, that Underworld sounds great, but I really want to get back to my book."
"The Egyptologist" is nothing like Phillips's bestselling debut, "Prague" (2002), and yet it's full of all the dazzling talent he showed there. Presented as a collection of letters, telegrams, journals, drawings, scholarly analysis, and ancient (ribald) poems, the book opens like some long-sealed chamber of mysteries. But beware: Trust no one who's read this novel, particularly reviewers, whose damp breath and careless touch could easily disintegrate its wonders before you can enjoy them....
Chief among the voices that Phillips choreographs so brilliantly is that of Ralph Trilipush, a young professor of Egyptology at Harvard University. He's the "dashing and mildly notorious translator" of King Atum-hadu's naughty and (possibly apocryphal) verse and a man of hysterical overconfidence. With the tenuous financial backing of a department store baron in Boston, Ralph travels to Egypt in 1922 to find King Atum's tomb, a simple matter, he claims, of following clues he stumbled upon while serving in the British Army during World War I.
We read letters to and from Ralph's fiancée (his "eternal Queen whose beauty astonishes the sun") and the running narrative of what will be his "indisputable masterwork," a comically vain piece of scholarship and personal reflection designed to immortalize his brilliance and shame his skeptics.
This two-month expedition is a scathingly funny example of counting your mummies before they're unwrapped. Ralph spends much of his manuscript describing discoveries that he will (surely) make the next day and glories that will (inevitably) follow when he returns home. This tendency of overanticipation requires constantly reminding his (future) editor to update the text when it's published by Harvard. No, make that Yale. "I could hear the pantheon welcoming me into its ranks," he says in a typical moment of reverie.
He works without a license with a small, threatening group of natives, just a few miles from where Howard Carter is pursuing what Ralph assures us is a "pointless quest," the final resting place of some drab little ruler (King Tut).
Ralph's idol, on the other hand, is the final ruler of the Middle Kingdom (c. 1650 BC). When enemies were crushing in on Egypt from all sides, King Atum-hadu dared to create himself in his own image of glory, a strikingly apt role model for Ralph.
Meanwhile, woven into Ralph's letters and scholarship is another series of letters written 30 years later by Harold Ferrell, a private detective, holed up against his will in an Australian nursing home. In the early 1920s, he had been hired by a British law firm involved in a complex paternity case. His sleuthing eventually ballooned into a double (triple?) murder investigation that involved none other than Ralph Trilipush.
For decades, he's been convinced that "these dynamite tales" could be profitably published, and now - ca-ching! - the nephew of Ralph's fiancée has written to him for information about his late aunt. "You want clear recollections?" Ferrell writes back. "Well, I'm historical truth on two legs."
Quoting from newspaper clippings and his carefully preserved notes, Ferrell seems to offer a much needed voice of veracity against Ralph's narrative of denial and pretense. But it's quickly apparent that he's just another self-reflective surface in this hall of mirrors. It turns out, he didn't keep notes during the most crucial part of the investigation, and the people he interviewed - from a communist librarian to a circus performer - provide testimonies that don't fit together at all.
What's more, academic records prove more fragile than ancient papyrus, and Ralph may be a more eternal queen than his fiancée.
For pages and pages, we're left digging for some Rosetta Stone to make sense of all these competing claims. Yes, denial is not just a river in Egypt. But confusion is half the fun here, whether we're swinging from the roaring Twenties, marching through sand-swept dunes, or serving in the libidinous court of King Atum-hadu.
Slippery truths fall out of these outrageous stories like asps from overhanging branches. Beneath all his comic ventriloquism and ribald parody of academia, Phillips is reaching for something more profound: the sad ways people represent and misrepresent themselves, shifting awkwardly from confidence to self-delusion.
"We are all Egyptian still," Ralph notes in a rare moment of wisdom.
As the ancient kings knew, it's always a matter of creating an image grand enough to sustain oneself but hidden enough to repel detractors. With his feverish plans, Ralph is first ridiculous, then just like that insufferable bore we once knew, and finally - gasp - a little too close to home.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0907/p1...
"The Egyptologist" is nothing like Phillips's bestselling debut, "Prague" (2002), and yet it's full of all the dazzling talent he showed there. Presented as a collection of letters, telegrams, journals, drawings, scholarly analysis, and ancient (ribald) poems, the book opens like some long-sealed chamber of mysteries. But beware: Trust no one who's read this novel, particularly reviewers, whose damp breath and careless touch could easily disintegrate its wonders before you can enjoy them....
Chief among the voices that Phillips choreographs so brilliantly is that of Ralph Trilipush, a young professor of Egyptology at Harvard University. He's the "dashing and mildly notorious translator" of King Atum-hadu's naughty and (possibly apocryphal) verse and a man of hysterical overconfidence. With the tenuous financial backing of a department store baron in Boston, Ralph travels to Egypt in 1922 to find King Atum's tomb, a simple matter, he claims, of following clues he stumbled upon while serving in the British Army during World War I.
We read letters to and from Ralph's fiancée (his "eternal Queen whose beauty astonishes the sun") and the running narrative of what will be his "indisputable masterwork," a comically vain piece of scholarship and personal reflection designed to immortalize his brilliance and shame his skeptics.
This two-month expedition is a scathingly funny example of counting your mummies before they're unwrapped. Ralph spends much of his manuscript describing discoveries that he will (surely) make the next day and glories that will (inevitably) follow when he returns home. This tendency of overanticipation requires constantly reminding his (future) editor to update the text when it's published by Harvard. No, make that Yale. "I could hear the pantheon welcoming me into its ranks," he says in a typical moment of reverie.
He works without a license with a small, threatening group of natives, just a few miles from where Howard Carter is pursuing what Ralph assures us is a "pointless quest," the final resting place of some drab little ruler (King Tut).
Ralph's idol, on the other hand, is the final ruler of the Middle Kingdom (c. 1650 BC). When enemies were crushing in on Egypt from all sides, King Atum-hadu dared to create himself in his own image of glory, a strikingly apt role model for Ralph.
Meanwhile, woven into Ralph's letters and scholarship is another series of letters written 30 years later by Harold Ferrell, a private detective, holed up against his will in an Australian nursing home. In the early 1920s, he had been hired by a British law firm involved in a complex paternity case. His sleuthing eventually ballooned into a double (triple?) murder investigation that involved none other than Ralph Trilipush.
For decades, he's been convinced that "these dynamite tales" could be profitably published, and now - ca-ching! - the nephew of Ralph's fiancée has written to him for information about his late aunt. "You want clear recollections?" Ferrell writes back. "Well, I'm historical truth on two legs."
Quoting from newspaper clippings and his carefully preserved notes, Ferrell seems to offer a much needed voice of veracity against Ralph's narrative of denial and pretense. But it's quickly apparent that he's just another self-reflective surface in this hall of mirrors. It turns out, he didn't keep notes during the most crucial part of the investigation, and the people he interviewed - from a communist librarian to a circus performer - provide testimonies that don't fit together at all.
What's more, academic records prove more fragile than ancient papyrus, and Ralph may be a more eternal queen than his fiancée.
For pages and pages, we're left digging for some Rosetta Stone to make sense of all these competing claims. Yes, denial is not just a river in Egypt. But confusion is half the fun here, whether we're swinging from the roaring Twenties, marching through sand-swept dunes, or serving in the libidinous court of King Atum-hadu.
Slippery truths fall out of these outrageous stories like asps from overhanging branches. Beneath all his comic ventriloquism and ribald parody of academia, Phillips is reaching for something more profound: the sad ways people represent and misrepresent themselves, shifting awkwardly from confidence to self-delusion.
"We are all Egyptian still," Ralph notes in a rare moment of wisdom.
As the ancient kings knew, it's always a matter of creating an image grand enough to sustain oneself but hidden enough to repel detractors. With his feverish plans, Ralph is first ridiculous, then just like that insufferable bore we once knew, and finally - gasp - a little too close to home.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0907/p1...
June 14, 2011
Yesterday on the plane back home to North Carolina I finished Arthur Phillips’ second novel, The Egyptologist. The book had been recommended to me by one of my mother’s friends, and reading the praise on the back and inside covers, nearly all of which mentioned Nabokov, I decided that it would be worth my time. Wrong. I am left wondering if any of those critics has actually read Vladimir Vladimirovich’s work. Phillips is very obviously, even painfully so, trying to be Nabokovian: unreliable narrators, focus on the creation of art, anagrams and other various mix-ups—but he misses the mark completely. His attempts at wit are, more often than not, failures. His unreliable narrators are so obvious that it would take an utter fool to not understand fully the entire plot and premises after only one hundred of its far too many pages.
The novel drags on and on, and the ending, which I had seen praised as shocking, hilarious, unprecedented, turned out to be even less than Eliot’s whimper. It’s not that Phillips is a bad writer, in fact, he does show skill; but, he needs to lay off the Nabokov-nabbing and try something a bit more original.
This novel is a great example of the reason why I don’t do creative writing. People are always asking if I want to be a writer, and their next question is always, “Why not?” How could I ever begin to write something comparable to my heroes, to Woolf, Waugh, Proust, Nabokov? It simply isn’t possible, and the task is too daunting for me to ever hope to take on. So I suppose I will just keep criticizing those who are brave (and foolish) enough to try!
The novel drags on and on, and the ending, which I had seen praised as shocking, hilarious, unprecedented, turned out to be even less than Eliot’s whimper. It’s not that Phillips is a bad writer, in fact, he does show skill; but, he needs to lay off the Nabokov-nabbing and try something a bit more original.
This novel is a great example of the reason why I don’t do creative writing. People are always asking if I want to be a writer, and their next question is always, “Why not?” How could I ever begin to write something comparable to my heroes, to Woolf, Waugh, Proust, Nabokov? It simply isn’t possible, and the task is too daunting for me to ever hope to take on. So I suppose I will just keep criticizing those who are brave (and foolish) enough to try!
May 12, 2015
One of the strangest pieces of fiction I've ever read, but enjoyable. This epistolary novel moves back and forth from 1922 Egypt and America and 1954 Sydney, Australia. It consists of entries in a journal of an archaeologist, Ralph Trilipush, on the track on the tomb of an obscure king, Atum hadu [Atum-is-Aroused] who has written erotic verse; letters and cables to and from his [Ralph's] betrothed; and correspondence from a retired detective, Ferrell, in an old folks' home in Sydney to a certain Mr. Macy, who wishes to fill in gaps in his family history, mostly relating to events surrounding a great-aunt. 1922 is the year Howard Carter astonished the world with the discovery of King Tut's tomb. Our archaeologist wishes to outshine Carter, with a greater discovery. There are 4 murders involved. The novel traces the feckless archaeologist and his bumbling as well as giving us Ferrell's memories. Early on, I figured out NONE of the narrators was reliable. What was true and what was false in their telling? There were certainly questions in Ralph's background and he revealed himself as a confidence trickster. How much of what we hear or read should we believe? How much do we delude ourselves? I took the book as a wicked satire on archaeologists and their funding. Note: I played around with the letters in our hero's name; it's an anagram for the author's name.
April 6, 2012
This book had a lot of things going for it. For one, it was funny. I don't often laugh out loud when I read books, but I cracked up several times during the course of this one. The author has a tremendous knack for phrasing, and it's used to full advantage during the funnier parts of this novel. But, there's a whole lot more going on here. The story presents itself as a puzzle. We are given journals and letters from the characters, and the true mystery of the novel is trying to find out where the truth lies in these personal accounts. The way that the characters rationalize their actions and the actions of others to consistently place themselves in the best light is fantastically done, especially when the narratives interlap, and we finally receive multiple accounts of the same occurrence. As a character points out within the novel itself, we cannot trust just one source of information, and this holds true with the novel as a whole. Can we really trust anyone? Discovering the answer to that question is what makes this book great.
August 17, 2013
Sometimes I question my sanity. Why I kept reading this tortured narrative, hoping against hope I would -- eventually -- find it to be as "witty, inventive, (and) brilliantly constituted" a novel as promised by the flyleaf copy, is quite beyond me. Especially given that I have authored flyleaf copy!
February 23, 2019
Bir zaman makinesinin sizi; 1920'lerin başına, Kahire'deki bir otele, gramofon sesi ve açık balkon kapısından içeri süzülen esintiyle dolu bir odaya götürmesini istiyorsanız, bahsi geçen kitap bu yolculuk için doğru bilet olur diye düşünüyorum.
1920'ler, insanların macera peşinde koşması, kendilerini var etmeye çalışmaları, beklentileri, yıkımları, hırsları, Eski Dünya'dan nemalanmak isteyen Yeni Dünya, unutmadan bir de caz var tabii. Öyleyse bu kitabın şarkısı bu olsun. Okuyacak olanlara şimdiden keyifli okumalar dilerim. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67NrE...
Not: Çeviri hakkında da birkaç söz söylemek isterim. Çeviriye yer yer Arapça ve Farsça kökenli sözcükler serpiştirilmiş. Yeni kelimeleri öğrenmeye, anlamını araştırmaya meraklı değilseniz, üşengeçlik yaparsanız muhtemelen kitap sizi sıkar ve çeviriye kulp takarsınız.
Aslı hanımın ellerine sağlık. Çeviriyi beğendim ve kendisinden yeni kelimeler öğrendim. Buradan ona teşekkür etmek isterim.
1920'ler, insanların macera peşinde koşması, kendilerini var etmeye çalışmaları, beklentileri, yıkımları, hırsları, Eski Dünya'dan nemalanmak isteyen Yeni Dünya, unutmadan bir de caz var tabii. Öyleyse bu kitabın şarkısı bu olsun. Okuyacak olanlara şimdiden keyifli okumalar dilerim. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67NrE...
Not: Çeviri hakkında da birkaç söz söylemek isterim. Çeviriye yer yer Arapça ve Farsça kökenli sözcükler serpiştirilmiş. Yeni kelimeleri öğrenmeye, anlamını araştırmaya meraklı değilseniz, üşengeçlik yaparsanız muhtemelen kitap sizi sıkar ve çeviriye kulp takarsınız.
Aslı hanımın ellerine sağlık. Çeviriyi beğendim ve kendisinden yeni kelimeler öğrendim. Buradan ona teşekkür etmek isterim.
November 12, 2007
I must say, this was a very interesting work; it's very hard to discuss it without spoilers, so I'll try to be as vague as possible.
First off -- it's about Egypt (I know, shocking, right?). If you couldn't care less about Egypt, give this one a pass.
The book itself is extremely well-crafted. Meticulously so. This is a positive and a negative; on the positive side, it's engaging and easily appreciated. On the negative, it's a little too well-crafted for a book that is, in essence, simply letters and journal entries. There just seems to be too much written (it also stretches the book a little too long) for it to seem natural.
I would normally give a book like this 4 stars, but there's an issue with 'likability' -- I didn't like any of the characters in the book. This is a key feature for me (it's why I didn't like the Thomas Covenant books), and with none of the main characters possessing any redemptive traits, it's hard to feel sympathy or kinship with anyone. Granted, the author does a good job in changing your expectations of certain characters (especially since no one but the reader has all the pieces of the puzzle), but none of them come off as likable. Although frankly, I don't see how there was room for a likable character in this book.
Probably worth a read if you have the chance and are interested at all in Egypt.
First off -- it's about Egypt (I know, shocking, right?). If you couldn't care less about Egypt, give this one a pass.
The book itself is extremely well-crafted. Meticulously so. This is a positive and a negative; on the positive side, it's engaging and easily appreciated. On the negative, it's a little too well-crafted for a book that is, in essence, simply letters and journal entries. There just seems to be too much written (it also stretches the book a little too long) for it to seem natural.
I would normally give a book like this 4 stars, but there's an issue with 'likability' -- I didn't like any of the characters in the book. This is a key feature for me (it's why I didn't like the Thomas Covenant books), and with none of the main characters possessing any redemptive traits, it's hard to feel sympathy or kinship with anyone. Granted, the author does a good job in changing your expectations of certain characters (especially since no one but the reader has all the pieces of the puzzle), but none of them come off as likable. Although frankly, I don't see how there was room for a likable character in this book.
Probably worth a read if you have the chance and are interested at all in Egypt.
May 1, 2008
Wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but the synopsis sounded interesting. Once I started it, however, I was absolutely hooked. Set alternatively in the relative future (1960's, I believe) and the early 20th c., it is an epistolary novel that tells the story from two entirely (and usually contradictory) viewpoints: a young Egyptologist eager to make a name for himself even while Howard Carter is discovering the archeological find of a lifetime, and an Australian detective bent on finding a murderer. It was fascinating to see how events are so completely colored by one's unique perception, and as a reader, you are left to read between the lines and interpret for yourself what really happened.
November 4, 2012
4.5 - at least.
In Arthur Phillip’s brilliant and entertaining The Egyptologist, not one but two unreliable narrators weave epistolary narratives about related events in the 1920s. In these accounts, facts, suppositions, and obsessions, events and identities sift and shift like sands in the desert under a gentle but steady wind. This is at its heart a story about the desire for immortality, whether it’s through the building of a king’s monument, the writing of stories, or a millionaire’s propagation of his name through heirs and legacies. It’s also about the act of story-telling itself and a story’s relationship to the “truth.” And lest that sound dull and analytical, it is also a really fun story about archaeologist/explorers, a private eye, a flirty flapper, speakeasys, gangsters and the drama of Howard Carter opening up King Tut’s tomb to world acclaim.
But the Egyptologist in question is not the famous Howard Carter, but one Ralph Trilibush who has had a life-long fascination with the XIII Dynasty king Atum-hadu (translation: “Atum-Is-Aroused”). Atum-hadu’s very existence has always been a matter of speculation, but if he did live (in this fiction), he was a ruler, a warrior and, in his spare time, a pornographer/poet. Trilibush mounts an expedition in 1922 to find Atum-hadu’s tomb with the financial backing of his father-in-law to-be and some business partners who turn out to be less than reputable. Trilibush’s tale is told in the form of journal entries, letters to his fiancée Margaret, and occasional cables. The other, concurrent story is told after the fact as remembrances in letters from a retired private investigator, Henry Ferrell, to Margaret’s nephew after her death 30 years later. Ferrell relates his own story about setting out after Trilibush as part of an investigation into other matters and what ensued, according to his not- always- objective viewpoint. Ferrell’s quest had taken him to Boston where he spent some time at the home of Trilibush’s prospective father-in-law and where he fell in love with Margaret, before he also travelled to Egypt. The two stories each contribute information, but through the disparate lenses of Trilibush and Ferrell, neither of whom may be reporting accurately, and neither of whom may perceive accurately, for different reasons, the events unfolding around them or even those they cause directly. In fact, we know almost immediately that Ferrell embellishes, as he freely admits it, and then we see him do it as he takes all kinds of license with the story he is trying to tell. Margaret, the pretty, spoiled daughter of a department store owner, plays both ends against the middle while constantly trying to outsmart the nurse assigned to care for and control her during a particular “illness,” the nature of which becomes clear only later.
Ferrell speculates about holes in Trilibush’s history as told to his fiancée even as Trilibush tries to piece together evidence of Atum-hadu’s history. Trilibush becomes aware of Ferrell’s investigation and each impugns the other’s knowledge and veracity, making it ever more difficult to discern whose story is true or more true. The multiple viewpoints and the device of letters delayed by weeks, as would have occurred in 1922, makes communications and therefore knowledge harder to sort out.
Trilibush explains to Margaret in a letter
Ferrell had become confused, you see, Margaret, by three documents: two missing and one incomplete. This often happens with people new to interpreting texts. They take any one document much too seriously, when of course nothing can be understood from a single document. When it comes to incomplete history, one needs to encircle the truth, not bound at it like an amorous kangaroo. But for men like Ferrell, if the first thing they happen to read says x, they believe x forever, and if a second document should say the opposite, they grow confused and begin shouting, “Conspiracy!” When they cannot find something, they assume it is because it never existed.
Trilibush later illustrates how one set of facts can be explained by a dozen speculative stories that can plausibly but falsely tie them together. Thus, he is well aware that one’s immortality is subject to the corrosive influences of ineptitude or misinterpretation, or both. And yet, we come to have more and more reason, as the story unfolds, to doubt Trilibush’s version of things too.
The question of whether Atun-hadu was real or a fiction like King Arthur runs throughout and, if he did exist, how much of his history was self-created. Theories about the act of creation figure prominently in the book as well. Metafictional themes abound. Trilibush, as an Egyptologist, has sympathy with the ancient kings’ philosophy that their histories and names must be preserved and recorded for them to continue to exist beyond their own years, to be immortal. But there is a paradox: the necessity for a recorded history that will preserve “reality” versus the dangers of interpretation through the biographer’s / story-teller’s bungling or stamping of his own identity on the story, therefore influencing perceptions of the enduring “reality” to prosperity.
This book was so much fun on so many levels: stories about ancient Egypt and modern discoveries, the structure and themes of creation, identity and interpretation, and to what extent stories create “reality,” plus the mystery of trying to piece together what was “really” going on. All histories, and stories, are interpretations, after all. There were a couple of “OMG” moments I won’t soon forget.
While this was very different from Phillips The Song Is You, both books were intriguing in the way they make us question the narrators’ perceptions and how that affects the unfolding of the story.
Highly recommended.
In Arthur Phillip’s brilliant and entertaining The Egyptologist, not one but two unreliable narrators weave epistolary narratives about related events in the 1920s. In these accounts, facts, suppositions, and obsessions, events and identities sift and shift like sands in the desert under a gentle but steady wind. This is at its heart a story about the desire for immortality, whether it’s through the building of a king’s monument, the writing of stories, or a millionaire’s propagation of his name through heirs and legacies. It’s also about the act of story-telling itself and a story’s relationship to the “truth.” And lest that sound dull and analytical, it is also a really fun story about archaeologist/explorers, a private eye, a flirty flapper, speakeasys, gangsters and the drama of Howard Carter opening up King Tut’s tomb to world acclaim.
But the Egyptologist in question is not the famous Howard Carter, but one Ralph Trilibush who has had a life-long fascination with the XIII Dynasty king Atum-hadu (translation: “Atum-Is-Aroused”). Atum-hadu’s very existence has always been a matter of speculation, but if he did live (in this fiction), he was a ruler, a warrior and, in his spare time, a pornographer/poet. Trilibush mounts an expedition in 1922 to find Atum-hadu’s tomb with the financial backing of his father-in-law to-be and some business partners who turn out to be less than reputable. Trilibush’s tale is told in the form of journal entries, letters to his fiancée Margaret, and occasional cables. The other, concurrent story is told after the fact as remembrances in letters from a retired private investigator, Henry Ferrell, to Margaret’s nephew after her death 30 years later. Ferrell relates his own story about setting out after Trilibush as part of an investigation into other matters and what ensued, according to his not- always- objective viewpoint. Ferrell’s quest had taken him to Boston where he spent some time at the home of Trilibush’s prospective father-in-law and where he fell in love with Margaret, before he also travelled to Egypt. The two stories each contribute information, but through the disparate lenses of Trilibush and Ferrell, neither of whom may be reporting accurately, and neither of whom may perceive accurately, for different reasons, the events unfolding around them or even those they cause directly. In fact, we know almost immediately that Ferrell embellishes, as he freely admits it, and then we see him do it as he takes all kinds of license with the story he is trying to tell. Margaret, the pretty, spoiled daughter of a department store owner, plays both ends against the middle while constantly trying to outsmart the nurse assigned to care for and control her during a particular “illness,” the nature of which becomes clear only later.
Ferrell speculates about holes in Trilibush’s history as told to his fiancée even as Trilibush tries to piece together evidence of Atum-hadu’s history. Trilibush becomes aware of Ferrell’s investigation and each impugns the other’s knowledge and veracity, making it ever more difficult to discern whose story is true or more true. The multiple viewpoints and the device of letters delayed by weeks, as would have occurred in 1922, makes communications and therefore knowledge harder to sort out.
Trilibush explains to Margaret in a letter
Ferrell had become confused, you see, Margaret, by three documents: two missing and one incomplete. This often happens with people new to interpreting texts. They take any one document much too seriously, when of course nothing can be understood from a single document. When it comes to incomplete history, one needs to encircle the truth, not bound at it like an amorous kangaroo. But for men like Ferrell, if the first thing they happen to read says x, they believe x forever, and if a second document should say the opposite, they grow confused and begin shouting, “Conspiracy!” When they cannot find something, they assume it is because it never existed.
Trilibush later illustrates how one set of facts can be explained by a dozen speculative stories that can plausibly but falsely tie them together. Thus, he is well aware that one’s immortality is subject to the corrosive influences of ineptitude or misinterpretation, or both. And yet, we come to have more and more reason, as the story unfolds, to doubt Trilibush’s version of things too.
The question of whether Atun-hadu was real or a fiction like King Arthur runs throughout and, if he did exist, how much of his history was self-created. Theories about the act of creation figure prominently in the book as well. Metafictional themes abound. Trilibush, as an Egyptologist, has sympathy with the ancient kings’ philosophy that their histories and names must be preserved and recorded for them to continue to exist beyond their own years, to be immortal. But there is a paradox: the necessity for a recorded history that will preserve “reality” versus the dangers of interpretation through the biographer’s / story-teller’s bungling or stamping of his own identity on the story, therefore influencing perceptions of the enduring “reality” to prosperity.
This book was so much fun on so many levels: stories about ancient Egypt and modern discoveries, the structure and themes of creation, identity and interpretation, and to what extent stories create “reality,” plus the mystery of trying to piece together what was “really” going on. All histories, and stories, are interpretations, after all. There were a couple of “OMG” moments I won’t soon forget.
While this was very different from Phillips The Song Is You, both books were intriguing in the way they make us question the narrators’ perceptions and how that affects the unfolding of the story.
Highly recommended.
November 17, 2020
Begins as a delicious satire set during the post-WWI mania for Egyptian exploration/exploitation; descends into a dark maze of plot twists that feels as if the reader is being led by torchlight into a newly opened tomb by a most untrustworthy guide. Part adventure story, part history, part psychological horror, with more twists than an M. Night Shamalan film. The audiobook is performed by a splendid ensemble including Simon Prebble.
I’m so sorry this book is over.
I’m so sorry this book is over.
April 16, 2009
Phillips, whose work in his debut novel, Prague, gained much acclaim manages to string together a dull, predictable, overly verbose, and frustrating "mystery" novel in The Egyptologist. Having figured out what happened by the time the first third of the novel was over, I was left to slog through this remaining avalanche of words only to be provided with a tremendously unimaginative and thoroughly unsatisfying explanation of what happened.
And what a slog it was. Told exclusively through letters written by the main characters, this novel fails to affect much mystery. The choice to tell the story through letters keeps the characters at a distance--an error that is heightened by the fact that the characters are all cardboard cutouts of real people. Throughout the novel, long, sickly soliloquies are a source of frustration--constantly reminding the reader that he doesn't care about any of these characters. Without any reader investment in the characters and plot pacing equivalent to a snail climbing a mountain, each page of this overlong treatise was a struggle.
Perhaps under the hand of a skillful (and cut-happy) editor, the maddeningly slow pace would have been tightened up, and the unfurling of the story would have been enough to engage. But with an ending that's telegraphed from the second chapter, it seems unlikely.
And what a slog it was. Told exclusively through letters written by the main characters, this novel fails to affect much mystery. The choice to tell the story through letters keeps the characters at a distance--an error that is heightened by the fact that the characters are all cardboard cutouts of real people. Throughout the novel, long, sickly soliloquies are a source of frustration--constantly reminding the reader that he doesn't care about any of these characters. Without any reader investment in the characters and plot pacing equivalent to a snail climbing a mountain, each page of this overlong treatise was a struggle.
Perhaps under the hand of a skillful (and cut-happy) editor, the maddeningly slow pace would have been tightened up, and the unfurling of the story would have been enough to engage. But with an ending that's telegraphed from the second chapter, it seems unlikely.
May 12, 2011
Arthur Phillips might be an evil genius; in real life the man is a Jeopardy! champion, after all!
If I hadn't known better, I'd absolutely believe that an aged Australian with a working-class chip on his shoulder, a troubled young American woman and others actually did exist, and that I actually read their letters. This ability to contort his voice so well by mixing up the vocabulary & the rhythms of his characters' speech so smoothly is part of this man's genius.
Another part of this genius is the adventurous Indiana Jones-esque story itself. Part tragedy, part comedy, the story arc follows a man trying to build his legacy - link his immortality, if you will - to that of an ancient Egyptian king's while people with competing interests try to hunt him down. Ralph Trillipush is a bit of a Jones character looking for fortune and glory, but as the story unfolds, it turns into a psychodrama. Once it's unfolded, you might find yourself looking at the creases in the fabric, trying to understand how in Hell Arthur Phillips folded and wrapped this story so tightly in the first place.
If I hadn't known better, I'd absolutely believe that an aged Australian with a working-class chip on his shoulder, a troubled young American woman and others actually did exist, and that I actually read their letters. This ability to contort his voice so well by mixing up the vocabulary & the rhythms of his characters' speech so smoothly is part of this man's genius.
Another part of this genius is the adventurous Indiana Jones-esque story itself. Part tragedy, part comedy, the story arc follows a man trying to build his legacy - link his immortality, if you will - to that of an ancient Egyptian king's while people with competing interests try to hunt him down. Ralph Trillipush is a bit of a Jones character looking for fortune and glory, but as the story unfolds, it turns into a psychodrama. Once it's unfolded, you might find yourself looking at the creases in the fabric, trying to understand how in Hell Arthur Phillips folded and wrapped this story so tightly in the first place.
March 24, 2012
Epic! This book is witty, hilarious and fascinating all at once. Takes a while to build up steam, but the reward is well worth it.
I suspect some of the negative reviews are the result of readers who didn't stick with it, readers who didn't quite realize what was going on, or readers who thought Phillips was trying too hard to be clever.
The book has multiple unreliable narrators who are constantly contradicting each other and sending letters across continents. In an interview, the author said one theme of the book is misunderstanding, and there's a lot of misunderstanding going on here. Some are minor misunderstandings, and others are huge misunderstandings that change perceptions, inspire malicious actions or lead to hilarious situations.
As a bonus, we get to tag along on an archaeological dig circa 1920, we get to witness a stylized version of Howard Carter's 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen tomb, and we get Atum-hadu's 'Desire and Deceit In Ancient Egypt.' It's all rendered in shimmering prose. This book is fantastic.
I suspect some of the negative reviews are the result of readers who didn't stick with it, readers who didn't quite realize what was going on, or readers who thought Phillips was trying too hard to be clever.
The book has multiple unreliable narrators who are constantly contradicting each other and sending letters across continents. In an interview, the author said one theme of the book is misunderstanding, and there's a lot of misunderstanding going on here. Some are minor misunderstandings, and others are huge misunderstandings that change perceptions, inspire malicious actions or lead to hilarious situations.
As a bonus, we get to tag along on an archaeological dig circa 1920, we get to witness a stylized version of Howard Carter's 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen tomb, and we get Atum-hadu's 'Desire and Deceit In Ancient Egypt.' It's all rendered in shimmering prose. This book is fantastic.
July 10, 2016
This book was stupid and terrible.
November 15, 2021
I didn’t liked this book at all.. Think that it is waste of time. Was difficult even to read it. I really like history, and therefore was expecting much from it… But my expectations didn’t fulfill.
June 5, 2022
2.5 stars, I really didn’t understand much of this book, and what I did was largely repetitive and boring :( I’m disappointed because I was sure I had been recommended this from a reviewer I trust but now can’t seem to find who that was (or if it ever really was recommended to me), and didn’t enjoy the story much.
February 12, 2008
I can't believe all of the naysayers who've reviewed & totally panned this book. I've seen this book called "boring," "tedious," "stuffy," but I have to say that I disagree with the best of them. I genuinely loved every second of this book and rather than devouring it all at once like I normally do, I read this over several days, slowly, so I wouldn't miss a thing.
I don't even know how to begin with my thoughts on this book. So I'll start with the basics. Would I recommend this book? Yes. There is a mystery, but it is quite easy to figure out pretty much at the beginning, so if you're looking for this book to get a mystery reading appetite whetted, this probably wouldn't be your first choice. If you are looking for something unique in the literature realm, then definitely I would recommend this book to you.
Told in an epistolary format, Phillips writes from the points of view of the "unreliable narrator". Set in the early 1920s, chief is the voice of Ralph Trilipush, Egyptian explorer in the early 1920s, in Egypt at the same time as Howard Carter when he makes his discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb. Very early on the reader comes to realize Trilipush's self-aggrandizement (is that a word?), from little hints from his journal entries, especially when he addresses "Reader," in his journal. So right away you can figure that anything coming from Trilipush must be suspect.
Trilipush works at Harvard as an associate adjunct professor, and has found backing for an excavation to try to locate the tomb of King Atum-hadu. He meets Margaret Finneran, who just happens to be an heiress to the Finneran's Finery fortune. Her father decides to get together a group of investors for the project and send Trilipush on his way to Egypt after he assures them of wealth and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Things go well for young Trilipush, until an Australian detective, Ferrell, comes to Boston as part of his travels to track down information regarding one Paul Caldwell, an illegimate heir of the Davies Ale fortune. It turns out that Caldwell was a soldier in Turkey at Gallipoli, and wandered off after WWI to Egypt and along with Hugo Marlowe another WWI soldier, was never heard from again. Ferrell's travels have led him to friends of Marlowe, notably, one Ralph Trilipush. Ferrell's perceptions are mediated mainly through the passage of time and memory; he is looking back at his investigations some thirty years later, and is also writing them down in letters, so what he has to say must also be looked at closely. Also, Ferrell tends to gain clients at every turn through information he offers to various people involved in his search -- adding another level of scrutiny to how he goes about his work and what conclusions he comes to.
You really should go and read a synopsis of this work; I can't really begin to do it justice. The book is quite good, suffused with irony and dark humor. A VERY intelligent piece of writing.
side note: if you pair this one with Nabokov's Pale Fire, you'll do yourself a favor.
I don't even know how to begin with my thoughts on this book. So I'll start with the basics. Would I recommend this book? Yes. There is a mystery, but it is quite easy to figure out pretty much at the beginning, so if you're looking for this book to get a mystery reading appetite whetted, this probably wouldn't be your first choice. If you are looking for something unique in the literature realm, then definitely I would recommend this book to you.
Told in an epistolary format, Phillips writes from the points of view of the "unreliable narrator". Set in the early 1920s, chief is the voice of Ralph Trilipush, Egyptian explorer in the early 1920s, in Egypt at the same time as Howard Carter when he makes his discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb. Very early on the reader comes to realize Trilipush's self-aggrandizement (is that a word?), from little hints from his journal entries, especially when he addresses "Reader," in his journal. So right away you can figure that anything coming from Trilipush must be suspect.
Trilipush works at Harvard as an associate adjunct professor, and has found backing for an excavation to try to locate the tomb of King Atum-hadu. He meets Margaret Finneran, who just happens to be an heiress to the Finneran's Finery fortune. Her father decides to get together a group of investors for the project and send Trilipush on his way to Egypt after he assures them of wealth and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Things go well for young Trilipush, until an Australian detective, Ferrell, comes to Boston as part of his travels to track down information regarding one Paul Caldwell, an illegimate heir of the Davies Ale fortune. It turns out that Caldwell was a soldier in Turkey at Gallipoli, and wandered off after WWI to Egypt and along with Hugo Marlowe another WWI soldier, was never heard from again. Ferrell's travels have led him to friends of Marlowe, notably, one Ralph Trilipush. Ferrell's perceptions are mediated mainly through the passage of time and memory; he is looking back at his investigations some thirty years later, and is also writing them down in letters, so what he has to say must also be looked at closely. Also, Ferrell tends to gain clients at every turn through information he offers to various people involved in his search -- adding another level of scrutiny to how he goes about his work and what conclusions he comes to.
You really should go and read a synopsis of this work; I can't really begin to do it justice. The book is quite good, suffused with irony and dark humor. A VERY intelligent piece of writing.
side note: if you pair this one with Nabokov's Pale Fire, you'll do yourself a favor.
October 21, 2015
Na početku nisam ovaj roman mogla uhvatiti ni za glavu ni za rep. Pisan je u obliku dnevničkih zapisa i pisama nekoliko likova, koji se međusobno nadopunjuju i isprepliću, tako da različite dijelove radnje doživljavamo različito, preko različitih likova, a sve njihove priče zajedno na kraju tvore (gotovo) potpunu sliku događaja.
Iz naslova i opisa sadržaja očekivala sam nešto a la Indiana Jones, nekakvu pustolovnu potragu za blagom smještenu u Egipat i prepunu piramida, grobnica i mumija. Ova se knjiga, ipak, pokazala nešto drugačijom od očekivanog, iako djelomice sadrži i pustolovinu i grobnice i mumije. :)
Ovdje se isprepliću kriminalistička priča, zagonetna potraga, povijesna otkrića, ljubavna priča, spletke i prevare. Miješa se izmišljeno sa stvarnim, istine i laži, priče pojedinih likova se sudaraju i odbijaju, a na mjestima su potpuno suprotne jedna drugoj, da na kraju više ni sam ne znaš što se ovdje zapravo događa, te što je stvarno, a što fikcija nekog od likova. Kraj je ostavljen pomalo nedorečenim, u smislu da je ostavljen čitatelju da sam zaključi kako je sve završilo - za koga sretno, a za koga i ne baš. No, sviđa mi se takav kraj i mislim da nekako baš odgovara ovoj neobičnoj priči.
Sve u svemu zanimljiva, čak zabavna, i povremeno napeta knjiga, unatoč tome što je na nekim dijelovima radnja možda previše razvučena (mogla sam preživjeti i bez svih onih silnih detaljnih opisa zidnih panela možebitne Atum-haduove grobnice). Kad sam već spomenula mitskog Atum-hadua, dijelovi priče koji se odnose na njega i njegovu poeziju dojmili su me se kao autorova parodija na egipatska iskapanja (ili je izmišljenom istraživaču/znanstveniku, koji je i sam na neki način parodija, jednostavno bio potreban i isti takav predmet istraživanja).
Kad sam se već na početku uhvatila usporedbe s Indianom Jonesom, s tom sam usporedbom vidno promašila - ovu bi knjigu možda bilo bolje usporediti s filmom 'Mumija' s Brendanom Fraserom. Sad kad pomislim, likovi iz ovog romana u taj bi se film baš sjajno uklopili. :)
Iz naslova i opisa sadržaja očekivala sam nešto a la Indiana Jones, nekakvu pustolovnu potragu za blagom smještenu u Egipat i prepunu piramida, grobnica i mumija. Ova se knjiga, ipak, pokazala nešto drugačijom od očekivanog, iako djelomice sadrži i pustolovinu i grobnice i mumije. :)
Ovdje se isprepliću kriminalistička priča, zagonetna potraga, povijesna otkrića, ljubavna priča, spletke i prevare. Miješa se izmišljeno sa stvarnim, istine i laži, priče pojedinih likova se sudaraju i odbijaju, a na mjestima su potpuno suprotne jedna drugoj, da na kraju više ni sam ne znaš što se ovdje zapravo događa, te što je stvarno, a što fikcija nekog od likova. Kraj je ostavljen pomalo nedorečenim, u smislu da je ostavljen čitatelju da sam zaključi kako je sve završilo - za koga sretno, a za koga i ne baš. No, sviđa mi se takav kraj i mislim da nekako baš odgovara ovoj neobičnoj priči.
Sve u svemu zanimljiva, čak zabavna, i povremeno napeta knjiga, unatoč tome što je na nekim dijelovima radnja možda previše razvučena (mogla sam preživjeti i bez svih onih silnih detaljnih opisa zidnih panela možebitne Atum-haduove grobnice). Kad sam već spomenula mitskog Atum-hadua, dijelovi priče koji se odnose na njega i njegovu poeziju dojmili su me se kao autorova parodija na egipatska iskapanja (ili je izmišljenom istraživaču/znanstveniku, koji je i sam na neki način parodija, jednostavno bio potreban i isti takav predmet istraživanja).
Kad sam se već na početku uhvatila usporedbe s Indianom Jonesom, s tom sam usporedbom vidno promašila - ovu bi knjigu možda bilo bolje usporediti s filmom 'Mumija' s Brendanom Fraserom. Sad kad pomislim, likovi iz ovog romana u taj bi se film baš sjajno uklopili. :)
July 1, 2016
I've never read anything quite like this one...
First, structure. The narrative is divided between two main characters with occasional additions from others. This alone shows literary skill; the book is told in several different and distinct voices.
Second, the chronology has been gone at with an egg whisk. Back and forth we go until things finally start to line up. Sort of.
'Sort of' because absolutely each and every narrator and character is unreliable. Some of what they say is true and some of what they say isn't. It's a daunting task to try to find out what really happened in this novel and at the end you will have....a pretty good idea of most of it.
You probably think that's unsatisfying and I suppose it would be if you didn't accept the author's game. It's a game he plays amazingly well.
I'd be shortchanging him if I didn't add in a mention about his sense of humor. It crops up throughout the book and definitely adds to the overall worth.
The book is a non-traditional mystery book and a parody all in one. Not an easy roller coaster ride, but a fun one. Fasten your seat belt!
First, structure. The narrative is divided between two main characters with occasional additions from others. This alone shows literary skill; the book is told in several different and distinct voices.
Second, the chronology has been gone at with an egg whisk. Back and forth we go until things finally start to line up. Sort of.
'Sort of' because absolutely each and every narrator and character is unreliable. Some of what they say is true and some of what they say isn't. It's a daunting task to try to find out what really happened in this novel and at the end you will have....a pretty good idea of most of it.
You probably think that's unsatisfying and I suppose it would be if you didn't accept the author's game. It's a game he plays amazingly well.
I'd be shortchanging him if I didn't add in a mention about his sense of humor. It crops up throughout the book and definitely adds to the overall worth.
The book is a non-traditional mystery book and a parody all in one. Not an easy roller coaster ride, but a fun one. Fasten your seat belt!
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