From Publishers Weekly
How was Phillips to follow up a debut as startlingly brilliant as
Prague? By doing something completely different. His story, set mostly in Egypt in the early 1920s, stars Ralph Trilipush, an obsessive Egyptologist. Trilipush is more than a little odd. He is pinning his hopes on purported king Atum-hadu, whose erotic verses he has discovered and translated; now he must locate his tomb and its expected riches. Meanwhile, an Australian detective, for reasons too complicated to go into, is seeking to unmask Trilipush, who may have had some relationship with a young Australian Egyptologist who died mysteriously. Trilipush and the detective are two quite unreliable narrators, and the effect is that of a hall of mirrors. Where does fact end and imagination, illusion and wishful thinking begin? Phillips is a master manipulator, able to assume a dozen convincingly different voices at will, and his book is vastly entertaining. It's apparent that something dire is afoot, but the reader, while apprehensive, can never quite figure out what. The ending, which cannot be revealed, is shocking and cleverly contrived.
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Phillips follows up his first novel, the best-selling
Prague (2002), with an equally inventive if totally unexpected foray into ancient Egypt. The novel is artfully constructed in the form of letters and journal entries written by unreliable narrators, the primary one being erstwhile Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush. Obsessed with fragments of hieroglyphic pornography reputed to be the work of King Atum-hadu, Ralph talks his opium-addicted fiancee's wealthy father into bankrolling his expedition to Egypt, where he hopes to unearth the king's tomb. Meanwhile, his every move is being tracked by dogged detective Harold Ferrell, who thinks Ralph is not only a fraud but also a murderer. There are many funny bits about Ralph's tendency to romanticize all things Egypt and about his burning jealousy of Howard Carter, the real-life archaeologist who discovered King Tut's tomb; in addition, the novel's layered construction cleverly reveals the reality beneath Ralph's endlessly self-serving commentary. Some readers might find the amount of pharaonic minutiae tedious reading, but it all serves to support the novel's shocking yet entirely credible ending and its themes of the longing for immortality and the nature of identity. Phillips proves himself once again to be a wildly creative storyteller.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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