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    The Egyptologist
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    The Egyptologist
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    The Egyptologist
    Audiobook16 hours

    The Egyptologist

    Written by Arthur Phillips

    Narrated by Simon Prebble, Gerard Doyle and Alyssa Bresnahan

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the bestselling author of Prague comes a witty, inventive, brilliantly constructed 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. Arthur Phillips leads this expedition to its unforgettable climax with all the wit and narrative bravado that made Prague one of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2002. Exploring issues of class, greed, ambition, and the very human hunger for eternal life, this staggering second novel gives us a glimpse of Phillips’s range and maturity–and is sure to earn him further acclaim as one of the most exciting authors of his generation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    ISBN9781436147583
    Unavailable
    The Egyptologist

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    Reviews for The Egyptologist

    4/5

    29 ratings29 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I read this book with a speed that would make you think I adored it, but in fact I figured out the plot twists very early on and finished it just to have my guesses confirmed. I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone except former childhood (or current adult) egyptologists--the parts with fictional!Carter were the best of the book.
    • 3/5
      This is awesome so far. Great voices on the audio.

      Still really enjoying this... I like that I can't figure out what the hell's going on with the mystery!


      ... so this turned out to be very Poe-esque, which I liked, although I really was looking for something... more at the end.

      I feel like I was very involved in the beginning and especially middle with the characters, but then suddenly I didn't have a hold on anybody - which was great fun and mysterious and all that... but I never got the hold back so I just felt sort of lost.

      Definitely fun and worth it, though.
    • 4/5
      I can't think of too many other edge-of-your-seat novels about archaeologists. This one is an extremely unreliable narrator, and yet you are pulling for him regardless. The last half will surprise you.
    • 4/5
      In addition to numerous conventional virtues, what makes this book extraordinary is its use of not one but two unreliable narrators. Each of them misapprehends events in a different way, and yet through their misguided narratives the author allows the reader to glimpse the truth.It's almost as if we were looking through two panes of glass, each with an amorphous shape painted on it, and discerning a figure only in the area where the two overlap--imperceptible if you see just one of them (and also if you fail to look at the reflections in the shiny surfaces). A remarkable achievement.
    • 2/5
      This was a tough book. I think the author is a very good writer. At times I liked the structure of the book. Most of the times I did not. It was not a simple narrative, which I could see this book getting five stars. It was a "package" of a journal from a main character, letters from another main character, and a few other letters from minor ones. I FELT THE AUTHOR WAS LAZY when the journal writer skimped due to feeling tired. I was confused because I didn't know that the documents were arranged in chronological order, sometimes breaking the main characters letters into different parts, with parts of the journal in the middle of the letter. The author was too clever for me. The four stars I gave to Fire Ice was too generous. The two stars to this book is too mean, but sometimes you got to be a Grinch.
    • 2/5
      I had to read this for my book club. I had tried it once before and given up, but stuck with it for book club. I am not sure I can recommend it very highly. I found it a little rambling and confusing. I think I know what happened in the end, but by the time I got there, I really didn't care.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book -- what a treat it was. Yfngoh misses the point a bit, I think -- the book is a delightful example of the "unreliable narrator" technique. Of course the guy is bogus. Give it a try.
    • 4/5
      Can a writer be too talented? Arthur Phillips might be. This book has wonderful moments. The plot concerns the life of an Australian slum boy who falls in love with Egypt. He then remakes his own life, becoming an Egyptologist replete with an Oxford degree. The next step, naturally, is to make some earth-shaking archaeological discovery. If you can invent yourself, you can invent a pharaoh as well. All these lies are tied to an aging Australian detective who dreams of becoming a mystery writer, a Boston beauty with a love of opium, Howard Carter (of King Tut fame), World War I, and the circus. If it all sounds a bit too much, well, it is. But just a bit. The second Arthur Phillips book I've read, but not the last.
    • 5/5
      In 1922 while Howard Carter is uncovering King Tut’s tomb, Ralph Trilipush, also an Egyptologist, is obsessed with finding the tomb of Atum-hadu, supposed Egyptian king and erotic poet. Trilipush is engaged to marry Margaret Finneran, a Boston socialite, whose father is bank rolling the expedition. Australian detective, Harold Ferrell, sticks his nose into their business while investigating the death of Paul Caldwell, an Australian soldier stationed in Egypt at the same time as Trilipush. He finds inconsistencies in Trilipush’s background and starts to believe he killed Caldwell.The story is told through journal entries, letters and cables. Most of the narrative comes from Trilipush’s journal from 1922. The other half of the narrative comes from Ferrell’s letters to Margaret’s nephew written in 1955. Both narrators are unreliable. Trilipush’s narrative can not be relied upon because he is so focused and sure of Atum-hadu’s existence that he can’t accept when the expedition starts to fall apart. Ferrell’s letters are also unreliable because he is writing from a rest home and piecing the story together from thirty-three year old notes and his own memories.The theme of the story is immortality. Egyptian kings thought they would achieve immortality through the Egyptian burial rituals; being buried in tombs with objects that would help them in the afterlife and mummification. Trilipush believes his immortality lies in finding Atum-hadu’s tomb. As Ferrell writes to Macy, he talks about how they can team up to publish Ferrell’s cases as a series of detective stories.There are no heroes in this novel. All of the characters are flawed; Margaret is a drug addict and her father hopes Trilipush’s find will pay off his underworld debts. Ferrell falls for Margaret and tries to sabotage her engagement to Trilipush. Some of Trilipush’s journal entries are tedious. I found myself looking ahead to see when Margaret or Ferrell would add one of their letters to the narrative. Near the end though, Trilipush’s entries became so interesting I couldn’t put the book down. I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in the psychology of obsession.
    • 5/5
      The book is written in the form of documents: letters, journal entries, maps, and figures. The epistolary novel has a rapid pace, good character development, humor, and action. The main theme is passion of the mind, a personality trait that can take a person out of the most devastating developmental environment and into a world of dreams. Passion, however, can change to delusion that in archeology may go undetected for a millennium. Arthur Phillips’ great story is very different from his more sophisticated psycho-historical novel, Prague (see my review on Amazon). Recently, I bought the author’s novel, Angelica and look forward to reading it on my Kindle 1.
    • 5/5
      This is an epistolary novel, told in a series of letters from several of the main characters. Those from Ralph Trilipush, Oxford grad, Harvard lecturer, archeologist, date from 1922 during a trip to Egypt to hunt for the tomb of Atum-hadu, whose existence most experts doubt. The letters reveal a man so confident that he is always right and destined for greatness that he filters everything through that belief and you quickly get the sense that there is only a grain of truth in his letters. His constant posturing and self-justification are very funny and cleverly written. The remaining bulk of the letters are from an Australian private detective who stumbles across Trilipush's trail and sets out to find him. Phillips is very clever to use this format to tell his story as the letters reveal the characters so clearly. It quickly becomes obvious that the letters are all self-serving and the truth somewhere in between. As the story progresses, you get a sense that it is headed for disaster. The ending does not disappoint. This is a very clever, beautifully written book.
    • 5/5
      Totally unexpected and one of the most memorable books I've read. The story is written like a spiral, bringing the reader closer and closer to the truth about the main character, who believes he has found a pharaoh's tomb to rival Tut's (being excavated nearby by his rival Howard Carter). Wild, horrifying, vivid. How I wish I could find something this wonderful to read even once a year!
    • 1/5
      I absolutely hated this book .. I felt like I needed to wash my brain after I'd finished reading it (hoping against hope that the ending would make the torture of reading it worthwhile).
    • 5/5
      Just who is Ralph M. Trilipush? He appears to be a highly educated, super intelligent Egyptologist, author of "Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt," a questionable translation of papyri found in the Egypt desert with pornographic quatrains supposedly written by King Atum-hadu, the last true king of Egypt. But none of the other archaeologists and historians think Atum-hadu ever existed. When Trilipush approaches Chester C. Finneran (wealthy owner of Finneran's Finer Finery of Boston) for funding of his latest dig (to find the golden tomb of Atum-hadu), he becomes engaged to Mr. F's lovely daughter, Margaret, and accepts funding from a group of partners including Mr. F and at least two unsavory men who have made their fortunes in the Boston underground economy. The year is 1922.Enter Mr. Harold Ferrell, a private detective from Sydney, Australia. Ferrell has been hired by one Barnabas Davies, a dying brewery magnate of London, who spent his youth as a hugely prolific philanderer and member of the Merchant Navy, to help track down one of his many bastard children scattered across the globe (he reckons there are at least 42, possibly 44 of them) before he dies. Ferrell's job is to locate one Eulalie Caldwell in the Sydney slums and track down her oldest son, Paul, one of the likely heirs to the Davies fortune. But the trail he finds is complex and serpentine and brings him hot onto the trail of Trilipush for information.> From Sydney to London, Boston to Luxor, Ferrell finds and interviews everybody who has ever met or spoke with Paul Caldwell. He discovers that, regardless of his claims, Trilipush never attended Oxford, was never in the British military at Gallipolli, and indeed, doesn't seem to have existed at all before his appearance in Boston. So, just who is he? Ferrell's infatuation with Margaret only fuels his desire to prove Trilipush is a fraud and a phony.This book has more twists and turns than a snake's trail. It's told solely through correspondence and "journals" that spans 30 years. It's written with such a razor sharp wit and such subtlety that it was a sheer delight to read, and forced me to actually take notes so I wouldn't lose the clues! LOL Full of dark humor and irony, this is a tale to savor and enjoy. I cannot say this book is humorous because it is a dark and complex tale, but it's written with such flair and talent and wit that I was smiling through the whole thing. Arthur Phillips is a new writer, this being only his second novel, but his talent is huge. The correspondence is from at least five different people, and each one is written in a distinctly different voice. I really cannot say enough good things about this novel of deception, intrigue, adventure and ambition. This is easily the best book I've read this year.Can I give it a 10? LOL
    • 4/5
      With just the right kind of ironic humor, Arthur Phillps tries to capture the life of a fictional Egyptologist, Ralph M. Trlipush, in the latter part of the year 1922.An eccentric old man named Barnabas Davies dies, with the intent to find, and compensate, illegitimate children he has scattered all over the world. The investigation leads to one Paul Caldwell of Sydney, Australia, born in the early 1890s and vanished mysteriously in the Egyptian dessert in the First World War. Who was Paul Caldwell? And who is (or was) Ralph Trilipush, the supposed English professor of Egyptology at Harvard University and engaged to the American heiress, Margaret Finneran? Through diary entries and letters, the author follows two stories: Trilipush's, as he prepares to uncover the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharoah named Atum-hadu; and that of an Australian detective, Harold Ferrell as he recounts his story from a retiring home in the 1950s. The various perspectives each of these two narrators have on the events contained herein are fascinating. Personal bias really and truly does have an effect on the way we view the world."Just how secret is secret enough?" is a question Trilipush poses on the matter of Atum-hadu and his buried tomb; but that same question might easily be asked of Trilipush's own life. Ralph gives us marvelous, self-centered accounts of growing up in Trilipush Hall in Kent, which, as the reader will find, are untrue; might also his account of discovering the tomb prove to be a fabrication? There are also mixed accounts of Trilipush's education, as well as his sexuality. The more one plunges into the story line, the more one finds that the stories of Ralph Trilipush and his Egyptian king are remarkably similar. Both seek to achieve immortality through a "third birth." This book is filled with Egyptian lore and trivia, as well as the fictional account of the life of Atum-hadu.On the flip side is the story of Trilipush's fiancée, Margaret Finneran, and her father, who owns a department store chain in Boston. Both of these characters keep secrets from Trilipush which threaten to destroy the relationship between the Egyptologist and the American girl.What I thought was marvelous was the deprecating way in which Trilipush describes Howard Carter, who at the moment this narrative takes place uncovers the tomb of Tutankhamen. Lord Carnarvon is secretly called "Lord Cashbags." I also loved the comments Trilipush makes about American tourists and the Egyptian natives. There is, of course, the highly-touted "mystery," which can easily be solved. But the mystery is NOT the point of this novel. This excellent book is a detailed account of a man struggling with his own identity.
    • 4/5
      The first time I read this book, it was as an audio (and I can still hear the narrator in my head – Simon Prebble did a fantastic job). Not exactly the best format for this since keeping track of names, dates, cryptic clues etc, is best done with a physical book. Thus at the end of my first run through, I had more questions than answers. It plagued me for days and I actually did listen to the end part several times. Did I hear and absorb what I think I heard and absorbed? Was the layered irony really that thick? Were the hidden in plain sight deceptions really that pervasive? Having got through it again in trade paperback, the answer is yes. It is that densely ironic and subversive. Here we find the poster children for unreliable narrators. Second reading as good as the first, but I'm not sure how it will hold up for future reads.
    • 5/5
      I listened to this on audio a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it, and I've been meaning to read it in hard copy but just hadn't gotten around to it. So, in April 2008, when I had a chance to buy it in book form (trade paperback) at the L.A. Times Festival of Books and have the author sign it, I jumped at the chance. Mr. Phillips is a delightful man, very polite and soft-spoken, with the most beautiful azure blue eyes I've ever seen. I told him how much I enjoyed The Egyptologist, and he admitted with a shy smile that it is probably his secret favorite too. :) Anyway, The Egyptologist is a darkly funny novel mostly told by utterly unreliable narrators about the way the truth can be twisted to make reality unrecognizable. All of the characters ~ from the brilliant and ambitious but ultimately pathetic Ralph Trilipush & the wily but slimy detective to Egypt of the early 1900s ~ are well-drawn and spot-on. The Egyptologist reminded me of The Great Gatsby in some ways ~ the writing is fabulous, the narrators unreliable, their quests for immortality and their reinventions of themselves very reminiscent of Fitzgerald's masterpiece, yet it's also great adventure with undertones of horror a la H. Rider Haggard.
    • 5/5
      This mystery centers on the disappearance of a bumbling archaeologist from 1920s Egypt while on the trail of a lost king who may or may not have existed. Told from the viewpoints of several different characters via their correspondence, it follows the Egyptologist, his fiancee, his financiers, the private eye hired to find him, and the long-lost bastard son of an eccentric Englishman between Australia and Africa. The story starts a bit slowly but picks up after what only feels like several hundred pages--holy cow, but they used tiny fonts on this book--as the letters from the hapless Ralph Trilipush reveal him as inexorably as his sketch maps reveal the nature of his king Atum-hadu, by turns haughty, self-absorbed, amusing, absurd, pitiable, and, finally, tragic. It drew me in. I'm glad I stuck it out.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic novel, the best I've read in years, set in the 20's in Egypt about a man obsessed with uncovering a fabled tomb, in the same way that Howard Carter did with the tomb of King Tut. The story is told through the letters and journals of a variety of characters, and much of the fun is figuring out who we can trust, who is being untrustworthy, and who can no longer tell fact from fantasy. The narrative takes a while to get going, but if you stick with it, you won't be able to stop. It's also that rare book that I can re-read with pleasure.
    • 5/5
      Might be the best book I have ever read. Stunning.
    • 5/5
      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 probably one of the best I've read this year, suffused with irony and dark humor. A VERY intelligent piece of writing and I absolutely cannot wait to see what this author does next. I loved his Prague, and this one was even better. side note: if you pair this one with Nabokov's Pale Fire, you'll do yourself a favor.
    • 3/5
      A very ambitious, but ultimately unfulfilling look at a madman who imagines himself to be an Egyptologist. The way the author creates the fantasy is interesting, but I found the ending disturbing--and not in a good way.
    • 5/5
      The Egyptologist is a remarkable piece of literature, carefully crafted and very engrossing. The story revolves around Ralph Trilipush, an eccentric Harvard professor who is in search of the tomb of Atum-Hadu, a lascivious king who remains unknown to the scholarly world. But Trilipush is not all he seems, as the reader discovers from his own journals and recollections from an elderly private detective, Mr. Ferrell. This book is so detailed; it is completely engrossing. The hints of unreality here and there seem to be intentional, to keep the reader in the same hazy state as Trilipush himself. About 2/3 of the way through the book, I figured out what was really going on with Trilipush and his find. Knowing the truth doesn't make the unraveling of the plot any less enthralling. This is just an excellent read.
    • 5/5
      I only read literary fiction on occasion, but I love all things Egyptian, so I decided to pick this up. And from the moment I read the first line to the moment I read the last, the story held me captive. Even days later I couldn't shake it from my head. I confess that I saw the end coming, but far from ruining the story for me, it only enhanced its effect. The Egyptologist is a thought-provoking picture of obssession and the need for recognition, the need to know that yes, your life has been valuable. I highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      one narrator is dishonest, the other is foolish--put them together and you get a lot of fun deciding what really happened.
    • 4/5
      Kind of weird novel set in Egypt at the time of Howard Carter. A man commits an odd sort of fraud only t oend it very badly indeed.
    • 3/5
      Read this at Julie's suggestion - she lent me the book. It seemed to drag a little in the middle 3/5ths. It reminded me of Wicked, and also of Ronald Merrick in the Jewel in the Crown. Deranged auto-didact is the main character. Interesting comments on death and immortality, as the bookcover said. As usual, I was looking for the hero to get away.It did bother me that the guy was absolutely looney by the end. He had made a lot of progress from his roots, and from the time he was in the service until his death was not that long. Why would he go so wrong in that short a time?
    • 5/5
      Everyone, including me, called it brilliant. Can't say more.
    • 5/5
      I'm still surprised that not only did I start this novel, but I could scarcely put it down until I'd finished it. With its unreliable narrators, epistolary format and absence of sympathetic characters, it seemed to be precisely the kind of too-clever-by-half literary novel that I can't abide.Wrong!Ralph Trilipush is a British archaeologist obsessed with a little-known pharaoh whose erotic writings he has translated. He's excavating in Egypt at the same time as Howard Carter, of whom he's madly jealous. Trilipush's background and credentials are obscure, his financial backing unreliable and possibly unsavoury. There are murders, conspiracy and shady dealings, sometimes comically inept; nothing and no one are what they appear to be. Suspicions are aroused and someone sends a private detective to put a tail on Trilipush, who has by now discovered the location of his shadowy pharaoh's tomb near to (but just out of sight of) where Carter is about to unearth the treasure of Tutankhamun.The story is told entirely in extracts from Trilipush's journals, contemporary letters and telegrams, interspersed with much later correspondence that the now-aged detective sends to a young relation of the aforesaid fiancee. These elements are so skilfully spliced together and allow the characters to unwittingly reveal so much about themselves that this reader, at any rate, was immediately hooked and unable to let go until the shocking denouement. And not even then, if truth be told.If had to say what The Egyptologist is about, I'd go for ambition, greed, self-delusion and the quest for immortality at any cost. It's a black comedy laced with subtle jokes (some of which I suspect I may have missed on a first reading), and like the best comedy, it has tragedy and pathos at its heart.Murder-mystery fans might be disappointed to guess whodunnit quite early on (it's the how and why that are truly intriguing and unexpected), and Egyptophiles might regret that the novel doesn't time-travel, but for me this was a hugely enjoyable and satisfying read.Sarah Cuthbertson