The Egyptologist - ISBNLookup.com

Barbara Mertz

The book is a tour de force of plotting and narrative technique; the intertwining storylines lead with mounting inevitability to one of the most horrendously, hideously humorous endings in modern fiction. It isn't an ending for the faint of heart, but if you appreciated Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief, this one will knock you out.
— The Washington Post

The New Yorker

This witty second novel plays with fire—“Pale Fire,” that is—by daring to appropriate the scheme of Nabokov’s cleverest novel. In both books, a deranged scholar, laying out a putatively brilliant yet comically improbable thesis, gradually reveals his own bitterness and delusions of grandeur. It’s immediately obvious that Ralph M. Trilipush—an obscure Egyptologist who claims to have discovered the tomb of an unknown yet visionary Pharaoh—is off his rocker. The fun comes in the way his megalomania mirrors the temperament of supposedly levelheaded scholars. (He engages in hilariously pedantic combat with the man who found King Tut’s tomb.) Phillips is nearly as deft as Nabokov at parodying the academic mind, and understands that his work must transcend mere homage. Unfortunately, he tricks up his plot by adding a dull detective who labors to expose Trilipush’s lies, and by stealing a twist from “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” The result is pastiche overload.

Publishers Weekly

This recording of Phillips's maddeningly suspenseful novel of death, betrayal and morbid self-absorption features outstanding performances by all of the narrators involved. Told through letters, journal entries and telegrams, the book features arrogant British explorer Ralph M. Trilipush; his gadabout American fiancee, Margaret Finneran; and a sardonic Australian detective named Harold Ferrell, who becomes entwined with them both. While the book is told alternately from their three points of view, Trilipush commands the majority of the story, and Prebble's portrayal of him is spot on. The only problem is that he does such a fine job of capturing Trilipush's smug, overbearing attitude that it's difficult to listen to him for long stretches. The episodes told from Ferrell's perspective become welcome respites, and Negroponte's Australian accent is as sharp as the character's purported powers of observation. But Ferrell proves to be only slightly less conceited than Trilipush, and certainly no more reliable. Though the book's many clues are revealed as slowly as artifacts buried beneath the Egyptian sands, this excellent production will pleasantly tease listeners until all is unveiled-even if the main guide is one of the more unlikable characters in recent fiction. Simultaneous release with the Random hardcover (Forecasts, July 5). (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Ralph M. Trilipush, the eponymous Egyptologist-a war hero who attended Oxford but never served in the military, with no record of his attendance at the venerable British institution? A sheltered, society heroine who drinks to oblivion and takes opium? These are but two central mysteries of this potpourri of intrigue, subterfuge, and deception concocted by Phillips, whose Prague was a recent best seller. The plot is perpetrated by a series of journal entries and letters among the protagonists, who include the Egyptologist seeking the tomb of the legendary Atum-hadu; his Boston fiancee, Margaret; her father, a financial backer of Trilipush's expedition; and a private eye keeping track of a series of murder cases that come to be closely interrelated in this web of mystery spun by Phillips. Unlike Prague, whose characters moved at a leisurely pace, this work offers, quite tongue in cheek, a tableau of action and adventure in a 1920s setting. Highly recommended for everyone in search of buried treasure. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/04; for a Q&A with Phillips, see p. 71.]-Edward Cone, New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A secretive archaeologist's obsession with an obscure Egyptian king uncovers several concealed histories-in Phillips's clever, labyrinthine successor to his prizewinning debut (Prague, 2002). In the fuller of its twin narratives, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush describes (via his journals and correspondence) his quest for the tomb of Atum-hadu, a monarch of the doomed XIIIth Theban dynasty-financed by American clothing store mogul C.C. Finneran. Trilipush is a grand mal eccentric and megalomaniac, whose translations of Atum-hadu's erotic "admonitions" (published as Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt) have scandalized and irked reputable fellow scholars. Is Trilipush a charlatan? That's the opinion of retired Australian private detective Harold Ferrell, who, as a nursing home patient in 1954, pens garrulous letters to the nephew of C.C.'s formerly opium-addicted partygirl daughter Margaret, to whom Trilipush had become engaged (though not for her father's wealth, as Trilipush's letters fervently proclaim). The two stories are connected by Ferrell's investigation of the disappearance of young Aussie Egyptophile Paul Caldwell in the very year (1922) and place where and when Trilipush was investigating Atum-hadu's (possibly apocryphal) history as emblematic of the classic "Tomb Paradox": attempting to achieve immortality by concealing all evidence that one has ever lived. This is a suave, elegant novel, replete with sinuously composed sentences and delicious wordplay ("brogue" as a verb; "claustrophilia" to describe Trilipush's pyramidal burrowings, etc.); it's reminiscent of both Angus Wilson's brilliant comic novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and Vladimir Nabokov's postmodernistmasterpiece Pale Fire (Phillips plants a half-buried allusion to the latter late in the book). Alas, it's also intermittently labored and redundant. The mysteries of Trilipush's veracity and sexual orientation are endlessly worried, as is his hubristic rivalry with historical Egyptologist Howard Carter (discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamen). Nonetheless, Phillips's formidable research and witty prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly a major novelist in the making. Author tour. Agent: Marly Rusoff