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    The Third Translation
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    The Third Translation
    Unavailable
    The Third Translation
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    The Third Translation

    Written by Matt Bondurant

    Narrated by Paul Michael

    2.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An ancient mystery, a hidden language, and the secrets of a bizarre Egyptian sect collide in modern-day London in this ingenious novel of seduction, conspiracy, and betrayal alter Rothschild is an American Egyptologist living in London and charged by the British Museum with the task of unlocking the ancient riddle of the Stela of Paser, one of the last remaining real-life hieroglyphic mysteries in existence today.

    The secrets of the stela-a centuries-old funerary stone-have evaded scholars for thousands of years due to the stela’s cryptic reference to a third translation...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateApr 6, 2005
    ISBN9781401385514
    Unavailable
    The Third Translation
    Author

    Matt Bondurant

    Matt Bondurant is the author of three novels, the most recent of which is The Night Swimmer. Lawless—previously published as The Wettest County in the World—was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s 50 Best Books of the Year. His first novel, The Third Translation, was an international bestseller, translated into fourteen languages worldwide. He currently teaches literature and writing in the Arts and Humanities graduate program at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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    Reviews for The Third Translation

    2.5/5

    52 ratings6 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Can I say enough in praise of dung beetles? One must dig through interminable prosaic prose until one gets to the nugget in this turgid evil cultist genre novel. The most entertaining germ I found in this pile of words is the revelations about the opportunistic habits of dung beetles. Otherwise, "The Third Translation" has lost me in translation from curious investigator of Egyptology to bored reader of ancient Egyptian esoterica.The hero is so colorless as to be invisible; he's indistinguishable from his similarly pale colleagues. He encounters a cult (finally!) that seems more like a troupe of performers belonging to a Ringling Bros. Circus gone wrong than remotely realistic human beings with twisted, much less sinister, ambitions. Instead, they are unintentionally laughable. It is this interaction that provides any action that exists in the novel.All the pedantic information about Egyptian gods and academic tidbits on hieroglyphic translation are meant to lend the novel authenticity, but they do little to contribute to the essence of story, which is telling what happens with a purpose.What's at stake in this novel is thin and unsatisfactory because as the hero admits and we all realize, he could simply retire, jail being unlikely as the theft of the papyrus is too embarrassing for the British Museum to prosecute.In fact, one wishes he would have -- around page 150.
    • 1/5
      This has got to be the ABSOLUTELY worst book I have EVER READ. BAR NONE. No point, no direction, undefined characters, unrecognizable time line. Non existent story. No redeeming quality. DO NOT BUY, BROW OR WASTE YOUR TIME READING THIS. I wish then had a minus rating. I would give it a minus 100! Stay away from this author. Sorry, but you would serve mankind better by making bricks instead of books.
    • 1/5
      This book is like a *really* bad Dan Brown novel. Not that Brown is all that great, but if his premise is improbable at least it's still intelligible and has some kind of internal cohesiveness. Brondurant's narrator is a weak loser and his plot is utimately incomprehensible. After all the breakneck action, we are still left wondering why everyone was so interested in this infernal Egyptian inscription. About the best thing I can say about this book is that it provides a colorful introduction to London's seedier nightlife.
    • 2/5
      You would think a novel about Egyptology and the deciphering of ancient hieroglyphics, set in London and presented as somewhat of a thriller, would be an interesting & intriguing read. I thought that too -- until I actually read the book. But I have to say this one was a big disappointment. The plot, which initially seemed like it was going somewhere, ended up going nowhere, and the ending brought about absolutely no resolution. Not only that, but I found the plot confusing. Often times I would read something & feel as though it came out of nowhere -- that I missed an important portion of the story that would better explain what I was reading. But then at other times the opposite was true: there were details that seemed really very irrelevant to the story and I wondered why they were included. I would like to blame this on the abridgement of the audio that I listened to, although I can't say for sure whether it was a bad abridgement or just poor writing. I dislike giving bad reviews, but this was really an overall forgetful piece of fiction.
    • 4/5
      You know, after I finished this book I went to find reviews of it to see what others thought. I'm so amazed that it got a lot of negative reviews -- what -- did people expect Amelia Peabody? And here's the other thing: I keep seeing references to this book as supposedly being on par with the DaVinci Code, as if somehow since the publication of the DaVinci Code, it has become the standard by which all other books dealing with cryptography, hidden clues, secrets should be written. So when did that happen? Books that are very good, like this one, are not well liked because once someone promotes the book as being something like The DaVinci Code, readers buy and read the book expecting to find a DaVinci Code and are disappointed when they don't. Hence the negativity. Sad but true! Why do we have to put books up to a "standard" of any other book? I think that's what's happened here, and it's too bad, because there's a man's whole life story in here that gets overlooked for the "ooooh...what's the secret? What is the third translation going to reveal?" type of thing going on in the reader's head. Granted, there are many books I have not liked and some I have REALLY not liked, but not because they were measured to some artificial standard that the author failed to attain; rather, because they were poorly written and didn't hold my interest. The Third Translation was definitely not one of these books; I thought it was very well written and had a lot to say.brief synopsis:The main character of this novel is Walter Rothschild, currently working at the British Museum deciphering the Paser Stela (which actually exists, by the way), which has a curious characteristic: it is an example of clever Egyptian wordplay and notes that the stela should be read three times. So Walter has found a way to read it horizontally & vertically and have it make sense, but he has spent a great deal of time, to the exclusion of everything else, working on finding the third translation. His obsession with things Egyptian, however, started when he was a boy, while in Egypt with his father, and his passion for translation & antiquities became sort of his understanding of how the world works. Therefore, in the real world that didn't match his understanding, he was a bad husband, a bad father and deserted his wife & daughter when his daughter was just 3. Now he's just kind of living for his work. The trouble begins when Walter decides to make a night of it with his friends and goes to a bar where his friend Alan (who has his own view of reality as well) introduces him to some people; one of them is a young woman Erin. He gets a little drunk, and takes her back to the Museum, where they do the do among some of the exhibits. The next day he is told that something of value has been stolen, an ancient papyrus, and that he'd better get it back. So the search is on for Erin through the streets of London, then on to Cambridge where he runs into a bizarre cult involved in what Walter believes is a conspiracy against him and his work on the Paser Stela. So while there are elements of mystery and conspiracy, cryptography and translations, you really have to try to get into Walter's head to do this author and book justice - put things together for yourself about what is revealed to Walter during his attempts at finding the third translation and how it applies to his life. I won't say more, but whatever you do, please do not read this book thinking you're getting The DaVinci Code, the adventures of Amelia Peabody, a "mystery of the mummy's curse" type thing or something mainstream, because this book is none of these. I have really learned a long time ago not to trust the book blurbs in most cases, because they're usually not accurate. If you want a very cool book to read that I would consider very good literature, then read this thinking that's what you're going to be getting.
    • 4/5
      I was really surprised by this book. I like the mixture of ancient history and the modern day, and I was expecting another quick mindless adventure ala The Da Vinci Code. But this book while mixing the ancient and modern is actually the Anti- Da Vinvi Code. It is deep and well written, thought provoking, and funny.The characters are odd and quirky and while you may not like them, you are fascinated to see who they are, and what they will do next.The setting is entirely in the modern day, with the ancient history coming into the picture via the artefact the main character is studying, and his attempt to find the Third Translation a euphemism for transcendance. As a failed human who has no successful relationships, the main character tries to figure out what went wrong in his life, like the archeologist he is. He understands the dead in the past better than those living in the modern day.The London settings are very evocative and gritty and work well with the surreal characters and events he gets involved in during his last week of work on the Stela at the British Museum.The book can also be read as a parody of the hoopla surrounding and making up the latest literary craze for mixing and twisting history to make a modern thriller.