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The Egyptologist
A Novel
by Arthur Phillips


6.0

based on 17 reviews
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based on 8 votes
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A witty novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston, by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil. [Random House]

Random House, 400 pages
08/31/2004
$24.95

ISBN: 1400062500

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger K. Miller

Nothing or nobody is what it seems, in this awesomely clever fiction.

San Francisco Chronicle Andrew Roe

A wonder, a work of imaginative prowess that more than fulfills the promise of "Prague." It's ambitious. It's inventive. It's challenging. And it's the kind of book that puts a writer's career on track without his having to endure murmurings of slipping on the second try.

Washington Post Barbara Mertz

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.

USA Today Melanie Danburg

It's well worth the careful excavation it requires.

Village Voice Alexis Soloski

Phillips succeeds best when he leaves mystery alone to linger over wordplay, exotic detail, and remarkable acts of self-deceit and self-creation.

Wall Street Journal John Freeman

Trapped inside this maze of unreliable testimony is a thoughtful meditation on the untrustworthiness of the past.

Publishers Weekly

Phillips is a master manipulator, able to assume a dozen convincingly different voices at will, and his book is vastly entertaining.

Salon Laura Miller

It's an adventure in unreliable narration, and replete with old-fashioned charms.

Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles

Beneath all his comic ventriloquism and ribald parody of academia, Phillips is reaching for something more profound: the sad ways people represent and misrepresent themselves, shifting awkwardly from confidence to self-delusion.

Kirkus Reviews

Phillips's formidable research and witty prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly a major novelist in the making.

Library Journal Edward Cone

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. [July 2004, p.73]

Los Angeles Times Heller McAlpin

Phillips relies on several running gags to propel his plot, some of which show early signs of decay from overexposure. Astute readers may surmise where he's going early on -- leading to some impatience with the extended ruse.

Chicago Tribune Claire Dederer

Astute readers will solve one of the major mysteries about halfway through the novel, if not before. Once that particular game is up, it gets a little tiresome to watch Phillips spin out his plot. Meanwhile, we have to slog through a lot of details of Egyptology that are, frankly, on the boring side.

Booklist Joanne Wilkinson

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. [1 June 2004, p.1671]

The New York Times Book Review Tom Bissel

Whereas ''Prague'' seemed like a beautiful, riffing, agitated, worldly novel, The Egyptologist has an occasionally ossified texture, despite its many moments of genuinely high comedy.

The New Yorker

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 New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Phillips's own storytelling, sadly, grows increasingly self-indulgent and bloated as the book progresses, and combined with the reader's knowledge of the ''surprise ending,'' it makes for a disappointing conclusion to a novel that got off to such a promising and bouncy start.

The average user rating for this book is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan B. gave it a6:
Incredibly imagined and written, but way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaay bloated. The main character, Trilipush, is incredibly obnoxious, and when obnoxious characters are well written, it makes for some tedious reading. Also, someone bellow hit the nail on the head in saying it's funnier in the thinking than in the reading -- this book ought to be very funny, and many many times, in fact almost at all times, it's nearly drowning in humor and irony, but it's just so damn overlong. And repetitive. If the book shed 50+ pages, it might be a 9. All that said, it's a really really impressive book, just not a really really readable one.

James S gave it a9:
Overlong, but imbued with a real sense of humor and pathos.

Esther N gave it an8:
Flawed. The lengthy Egyptian section is not nearly as interesting to the reader as it was the author. Despite that, a book that is enjoyable and accomplished, but fails by one wanting it to be more.

J Styles gave it a2:
A tedious pastiche that's funnier in the thinking about than in the reading. (Genuinely comic novels are invariably funnier in the reading than the plot.) On page 334 of the paperback edition, there is a nice line: "When it comes to incomplete history, one needs to encircle the truth, not bound at it like an amorous kangaroo." Phillipps is clearly in randy bounder mode here.

Steve gave it a3:
wordy, long-winded, obvious

Geneva D gave it a9:
funny

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The Egyptologist A Novel by Arthur Phillips

The Egyptologist
A Novel
by Arthur Phillips