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Title: The Fall of Troy

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Narrator: Michael Maloney

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-20-07

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Sophia Chrysanthis is in her 20s when the celebrated German archaeologist, Herr Obermann, seeks her out; he wants a Greek bride who is able to read Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is tying canvas sacking to her legs so that she can kneel on the hard ground in the trench. Obermann is very good in the art of archaeology - perhaps too good. Obsessive and intuitive, he is a romantic visionary.

©2006 Peter Ackroyd;

Critic Reviews:

"Provoking, unsettling, ingenious - and a delight." (Guardian)

"Skillfully interweaves classical and 19th-century stories, employing motifs from both Homer and Charlotte Bronte....Ackroyd's most exuberant novel for years." (Daily Mail)

Members Reviews:

Great read.

I'm a fan forever. Great read.

An interesting take on the real Troy discoverer

A most interesting approach. A definite villian, an interesting heroine, and a surprising tale of what "might" have happened on the excavation of Troy.

Dubious Doings at Dig

I very much enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's short novel The Fall of Troy. A reader's enjoyment will be enhanced by knowledge of the real-life character of Heinrich Schliemann who serves as the springboard for the fictional archaeologist Obermann in the book. I first read of Schliemann in Irving Stone's biographical novel The Greek Treasure. While Irving Stone's book was a solid biographical novel, Ackroyd's book is at turns comic, mythic, suspenseful and gothic as various characters unearth a multilayered city at Hisarlik, Turkey.

Obermann is a great character and I never knew quite how to respond to him - was he a genius, a fraud, a thief, a menace or a visionary? Ackroyd gives life and vivid characterizations to Obermann's wife Sophia, a British archaeologist, a blind scholar and to the landscape itself, making the trees and rocks resound with the echoes of the Greek gods.

The Fall of Troy is a fascinating read for those interested in Greek mythology, the Iliad or the life of Heinrich Schliemann.

âArchaeology is not a science,â Obermann says. âIt is an art.â

I have read many biographies and nonfiction books by Mr. Ackroyd and was excited to try a novel. I am sorry to say I was not as enthralled as I hoped in this particular story. Sophia is a 16-year-old Greek girl who is wooed by the famous Herr Obermann to be his wife. Her family is delighted for her to go off with him to the archaeological site of Troy, which he recently uncovered.

Mr. Obermann is a difficult man to like because he has set ideas and anything that proves to be different than his beliefs are destroyed or ignored. Another archaeologist arrives whose study takes him in a different direction from Obermann and Sophia is caught between the men.

That is the basic plot of this book. My problems with this story are that it is hard to know what is based on facts and what is total fiction. I also had a hard time liking any of the characters although it was easy to like Sophia, especially at the end of the novel.

If you enjoy archaeology and Troy especially, you will probably enjoy this novel. I just had a hard time getting through it.

I borrowed this book from my local library.

A Glorious Rogue

Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy, that much I knew. I had always assumed him to be some dusty nineteenth-century German professor, treading in the footsteps of the illustrious Goethe. But no.