The Visitors

Beauman, Sally

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 075155166X ISBN 13 : 9780751551662

Editeur : Abacus, 2015

Présentation de l'éditeur :

It's Death on the Nile meets Downton Abbey, as the action moves between Highclere Castle and Egypt's Valley of the Kings . . . A gripping story touching on friendship, scholarship, love and family' Daily Mail

Based on a true story of discovery, The Visitors is New York Times bestselling author Sally Beauman's brilliant recreation of the hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings - a dazzling blend of fact and fiction that brings to life a lost world of exploration, adventure, and danger, and the audacious men willing to sacrifice everything to find a lost treasure.

Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy is caught up in the intrigue and excitement that surrounds the obsessive hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb. As she struggles to comprehend an adult world in which those closest to her are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy longs for a friend she can love. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, her life is transformed. As the two girls spy on the grown-ups and try to understand the truth behind their evasions, a lifelong bond is formed.

Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made and the secrets she kept, Lucy disinters her past, trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago in Cairo and the Valley of the Kings. And for the first time in her life, she comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.

Revue de presse :

[A] beautifully written novel, a tale of intertwined lives that is at once powerful and haunting. Beauman maintains the tension surrounding the tomb's discovery (The Times)

The settings are glamorous and mysterious, the woman who dies in strange, unexplained circumstances is morally dubious and very beautiful, and there are real-life characters, such as Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, searching for Tutankhamun's tomb, to add extra spice (Independent on Sunday)

There is much to delight in this book....Nearly a century after King Tut's discovery, Beauman manages to make both the lives of her fictional characters and those at the historical center of Tut's unearthing riveting (New York Journal of Books)

Interesting, unusual and informative, it is greatly enjoyable (Literary Review)

Colourful and fast-paced, this chunky but highly readable novel offers plenty of intrigue and an interesting portrait of the adult world, as seen through a child's enquiring eyes. (The Lady)

A book of astounding scholarship on Egyptology and the 1920s.... The novel's...writing and characterizations are golden (Booklist, starred review)