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The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) -- October 10, 2004
Sunday -- The Egyptologist; Over the top, playful mystery amusing --
By J.P. TROSTLE -- "The Egyptologist" by Arthur Phillips --
(Random House, $24.95, 383 pages)
Dear Matt,
Hope this note finds you well, old sport. A while back you asked me
to keep an eye out for anything new by that up-and-coming fellow
Arthur Phillips. Lo and behold, the other week our assistant
features editor dropped a hefty tome on my desk titled "The
Egyptologist," and after many a late night I can safely report that
our young Mr. Phillips has a second book in him after all...
Read more...
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The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) --
October 10, 2004 Sunday -- Deep in the tomb of self-deception --
By Michael Griffith -- Unreliable narration has been described as a
conspiracy between writer and reader aimed at a hapless narrator,
who believes himself either to be telling the truth or carrying off
a clever ruse. In the best examples of the technique, however --
works by Vladimir Nabokov, Machado de Assis, Jane Shapiro and Steven
Millhauser, among others -- the unreliability is deeper and more
dangerous. The problem isn't that the narrator is untrustworthy, but
that narration itself is...
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Providence Journal - September 26, 2004 -- Digging
up trouble in Egypt --By Lois D. Atwood -- THE EGYPTOLOGIST, by
Arthur Phillips. Random House. 394 pages. $24.95. -- This is a dense
and witty novel, full of surprises and puzzles, set in a hot, dusty
landscape populated by odd characters. The Egyptologist of the title
is Ralph Trilipush, an Englishman seeking funds for an expedition to
Deir el Bahari, near the Valley of the Kings...
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USA Today - September 16, 2004 -- 'Egyptologist':
Dig in and enjoy -- By Melanie Danburg -- The Egyptologist by
Arthur Phillips, Random House, 383 pp., $24.95 -- Arthur Phillips,
whose best-selling Prague (2002) was shrewdly comic and full of plot
twists, abandons 1990s Budapest for Egypt in the 1920s in The
Egyptologist. Gone are the American expats eager to reinvent
themselves. In comes Ralph Trilipush, an Oxford-educated
archaeologist (or so it seems) eager to prove that a mythical
ancient king really lived...
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San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday September 12,
2004 -- Intrigue, deceit seethe in Egypt's various pasts --
Reviewed by Andrew Roe -- The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips,
RANDOM HOUSE; 386 Pages; $24.95 -- Although Arthur Phillips'
well-received first novel, "Prague," tapped into the recent
zeitgeist (ennui-soaked people in their 20s living not in the Czech
capital but the less sexy, less literary Budapest), it also
displayed some unexpected -- and much welcomed -- historical acumen.
Mixed with the contemporary story was a subplot about a venerable
Hungarian publishing company, allowing Phillips the opportunity to
chronicle a country's turbulent history...
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San Jose Mercury News - Sunday September 12, 2004
-- Fanaticism, delusion and mystery entertain -- By Charles
Matthews -- 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...
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Christian Science Monitor - September 8, 2004 -- THE EGYPTOLOGIST by Arthur Phillips, Random House, 394 pp., $24.95
-- Are you my mummy? --
King Atum leads archeologists through a deadly pyramid scheme --By Ron Charles
-- 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...
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Star Tribune -- September 5, 2004 -- Dig This --
Part adventure yarn, part murder mystery, the sprawling
“Egyptologist” is most of all a comedy of misinformation, writ
large. -- 'The Egyptologist' by Arthur Phillips -- Reviewed By
Brigitte Frase -- There's a huge distance, in every sense, between
the post-Communist city of Budapest (the setting of Arthur Phillips'
first novel, "Prague") and the 1920s Valley of the Kings where Lord
Carnarvon and archeologist Howard Carter discover the tomb of
Pharaoh Tutankhamen (the setting of Phillips' second novel, "The
Egyptologist")...
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The San Diego Union-Tribune -- September 5, 2004
Sunday -- A kingly whodunit caper for the Egyptology set -- By
Arthur Salm -- Early in Arthur Phillips' "The Egyptologist" (Random
House, 383 pages, $24.95), we're offered some lines of poetry
written by the great King Atum-hadu of Egypt's XIIIth Dynasty, taken
from a fragment of hieroglyph discovered and translated by the
British archaeologist Ralph M. Trilipush:
The gods and I walk slowly arm in arm
And sometimes we do not walk at all,
But sit upon a rock and watch the charm
Of two goats f----- behind a peasant's wall.
Clearly, something is amiss. Or rather, everything is amiss. Since
when does ancient Egyptian...
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Pittsburg Post-Gazette -- Sunday, September 5, 2004
--
"THE EGYPTOLOGIST" by Arthur Phillips, Random House ($24.95) --
Phillips taps into pyramid power with gripping second novel -- By Roger K. Miller
-- As
an indication of the playfulness at the heart of this novel, consider that
the name of its protagonist, Ralph Trilipush, is an anagram of the name of
its author, Arthur Phillips.
Everybody is hiding behind something else, and nothing or nobody is what it
seems in this awesomely clever fiction.
Phillips, who had a best seller two years ago with his first novel,
"Prague," has an excellent chance of repeating his success in this entirely
different sort of outing.
It takes the form of letters and journal entries written by...
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Newsday - September 5, 2004 --
Where's my mummy? --
BY JOHN ANDERSON --
THE EGYPTOLOGIST, by Arthur Phillips. Random House, 383 pp., $24.95 -- For
Arthur Phillips, the misleading voice is already a familiar device.
"Prague," his auspicious 2002 debut set in post-Cold War Budapest (as for
the title, think "Chinatown"), was cast with a veritable platoon of
unreliable narrators, exploitative Americans and callow Europeans, all
looking to mine quick bucks out of unregulated economic rubble. Their
motives could no more be trusted than their perceptions of reality...
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Entertainment Weekly -- September 3, 2004 --
Books/Between The Lines -- Prince Of Egyptology -- Gregory
Kirschling -- Until Mormon whiz kid Ken Jennings and his still-going
38-game winning streak came along this summer, novelist Arthur
Phillips was the most famous Jeopardy! winner in history. Now he's
just a five- time champion from 1996 whose 2002 novel Prague, about
expats living in Budapest, became a surprise bestseller. Yet
Phillips, 35, laughs off his dethroning: "I keep hoping they'll put
me on Celebrity Jeopardy! now, and I can go whip Pamela Anderson's
butt for charity."...
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Salon.com - September 2, 2004 -- "The
Egyptologist" by Arthur Phillips -- By Laura Miller -- A
romantic explorer searches for a Pharaoh's tomb, while a cynical
detective searches for the truth about the explorer. In this
delightfully old-fashioned tale, they're both completely misguided.
Ancient Egypt and detective stories inspire a similar feverish
obsession, and Arthur Phillips, in his new novel "The Egyptologist,"
has a pretty good idea why. The novel, disguised as a collection of
letters and journal entries, traces two stories, each woven from a
mix of fact and fabrication, by two very different men...
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Esquire - September 1, 2004 -- Big Important Book
of the Month: THE EGYPTOLOGIST, by Arthur Phillips -- by
Benjamin Alsup -- For all its Gen X trappings, Arthur Phillips's
first novel, Prague , was essentially an old-school novel of ideas,
a retro gabfest populated by the well-educated, the hyperarticulate.
Its characters drank brandy, mourned the passing of youth, and
meditated upon the meaning of nostalgia. And the novel succeeded in
invoking the pleasures of café society just as those pleasures
seemed certain to fade under a wash of tabloid headlines...
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People Magazine - Four Star Review, Critic’s
Choice -- August 30, 2004 -- The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips --
By Kyle Smith -- The moon's an errant thief, and her pale fire
she snatches from the sun," wrote Shakespeare. In The Egyptologist
everyone's looking to swipe some pale fire, not least the author,
who has modeled this cracked, utterly engulfing detective tale on
Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the czar of all unreliable-narrator
yarns. In both novels, you don't read between the lines; you live
between them. Phillips, matching the cleverness of his debut...
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Chicago Sun Times and Orlando Sentinel - August 29, 2004
--
A clever second outing for Arthur Phillips --By Roger K. Miller -- As
an indication of the playfulness at the heart of The Egyptologist, consider
that the name of its protagonist, Ralph Trilipush, is an anagram of the name
of its author, Arthur Phillips. Everybody is hiding behind something else,
and nothing or nobody is what it seems, in this awesomely clever fiction.
Phillips, who had a best-seller two years ago with his first novel, Prague,
has an excellent chance of repeating his success in this entirely different
sort of outing...
Read more...
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Atlanta Journal Constitution and Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel - August 29, 2004 -- Imagination unearthed -- Egyptian
discoveries give multilayered novel twists, turns By Carlo Wolff
-- The Egyptologist. By Arthur Phillips. Random House. $24.95.
383 pages. -- The verdict: Who knew archaeology could be
so dramatic? -- Arthur Phillips' heady novel "The Egyptologist"
blends fact and fiction to extraordinary effect, but it is by no
means predictable docu-fiction. Resonant and knowing, this comedy of
manners and mores attests above all to an astonishing imagination.
There are so many voices here, so many points of view, so many jokes
and puzzles upon puzzles, all composing a layered, multi-perspective
book that is literally and literarily fabulous...
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch - August 29, 2004 -- "The
Egyptologist" A novel by Arthur Phillips -- Published by Random
House, 383 pages, $24.95 -- Arthur Phillips' engrossing novel,
"The Egyptologist," set in the early 1920s amid the American mummy
craze, is told in several distinct voices. But the central narrator
of this epic dark comedy of manners is an obsessed young
archaeologist searching near Luxor for the ancient tomb of a
possibly apocryphal pornographer king. The archaeologist, Ralph
Trilipush - his last name appropriately suggests a Romantic...
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The Miami Herald - August 29, 2004 --
The Egyptologist. Arthur Phillips. Random. 418 pages. $24.95. -- TOMB & DOOM
--
CLEVER, LAYERED HISTORICAL NOVEL VISITS EGYPT, AUSTRALIA AND BOSTON IN AN
ADVENTURE POPULATED BY LIARS AND FAKES --
By Elsbeth Lindner -- Ralph
Trilipush's magnificent obsession is the ancient Egyptian King Atum-Hadu,
the last king of the XIIIth Dynasty in 1650 B.C., also known as Atum-Is-Aroused,
''a lost Sadist, omni-sexualist, brutal warrior, symbol of loss and
immortality.'' Atum-Hadu wrote the Admonitions, a volume of erotic verse
translated and published by Trilipush as Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt.
This is a title that would serve equally well for The Egyptologist
itself, Arthur Phillips' vastly entertaining second novel, a rich,
fat historical romp set in Egypt...
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Los Angeles Times -- August 29, 2004 --
Brainy wordplay transported to a desert land --
'The Egyptologist: A Novel', Arthur Phillips -- Random House: 386 pp., $24.95
--
By Heller McAlpin -- Arthur
PHILLIPS' second novel, "The Egyptologist," reads like a love child of Edgar
Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire,"
with Oscar Wilde's Bunbury from "The Importance of Being Earnest" as
godparent. Phillips proved himself a writer to watch with his first novel,
"Prague" (2002), his cynical, caustic, frolicsome and moving view of a new
lost generation seeking to make its mark in Communist-pocked Eastern Europe.
"The Egyptologist" shifts to sandier turf, a murder mystery in the Egyptian
desert told by some of the most amusingly unreliable narrators you'll find
in literature...
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Wall Street Journal - Friday, August 27, 2004 -- THE EGYPTOLOGIST by Arthur Phillips
Random House, 383 pages, $24.95 --
MIDWAY
INTO Arthur Phillips's second novel, an explorer discovers a tomb buried in
the Egyptian desert. Inspired by visions of treasure glistening within, the
man pries open its 2,000-pound door only to discover an empty vault. On
closer inspection he finds reason for hope. A neatly concealed door leads to
another chamber. But this room, too, is empty. Or is it? Further inspection
reveals another door, which leads to more empty chambers, which may or may
not contain hidden traps...
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Kirkus Review - August 1, 2004 -- THE EGYPTOLOGIST
-- Author: Phillips -- Publisher:Random -- Pages: 432 -- Price
(hardback): $24.95 -- Publication Date: 9/7/2004 -- ISBN:
1-4000-6250-0 -- 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...
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Library Journal - July 2004 -- The Egyptologist,
Arthur Phillips -- 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...
Read more...
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American Library Association -- Booklist -- June
2004 -- Phillips, Arthur. The Egyptologist. Sept. 2004. 432p.
illus. Random, $24.95 (1-4000-6250-0). -- 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 fiancée’s wealthy father into
bankrolling his expedition to Egypt...
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Publishers Weekly - June 30, 2004 -- THE
EGYPTOLOGIST -- Arthur Phillips. Random, $24.95 (432p) ISBN
1-4000-6250-0 -- 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...
Read more...
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