Book report: Pompeii, by Robert Harris
I'm apparently a big fan of Robert Harris. I've read every novel he's published so far. One interesting thing about him is that he writes in several different genres, which you don't see a lot. Usually, a person is just a mystery writer or just a romance writer, and they don't stray outside their area. But Harris has written books in all these areas:
* What-if history: Fatherland (what if World War II ended in an armistice and Nazi Germany continued to the 1960s); Archangel (what if Stalin had an heir)
* Historical: Enigma (cracking the German secret code in WWII), Imperium (Cicero, the famous Roman orator)
* Modern political thriller: Ghost (ghostwriter for fictional Tony Blair discovers his secret)
Maybe the common denominator is politics, but I doubt I would have read so many books about politics.
This novel puts us back in Rome. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in ash and rock for more than a thousand years. The eruption was a complete surprise to the thousands of victims: they didn't even know Vesuvius was a volcano, never mind an active one. (Side note: One of my grandmothers was from Scafati, a small town near Pompeii. I doubt if she ever knew about Pompeii, though.) This was probably the most famous natural disaster in history, and a good setting for a disaster story.
However, Harris doesn’t give us an ordinary disaster story. Most of the book is about the efforts of Marcus Attilius, the newly assigned aquarius – literally, a water-bearer, like the astrological sign, but here meaning an engineer in charge of the local aqueducts – to figure out why the water has stopped flowing to the towns around Neapolis, the new naval base. Roman aqueducts were marvels of engineering, carrying fresh water from the mountains in and around Italy hundreds of miles to drier areas. So, this book is actually a high-tech thriller that happens to take place in Roman times.
Attilius manages to uncover not only the physical problems with the aqueduct, but also a major political and financial scandal involving systematic bribery by a nouveau riche former slave who, thank heavens, has a beautiful daughter. Events unfold in the two days before the eruption, and Harris keeps reminding us that the sundial is ticking. We know that the whole area is going to be destroyed, but none of the characters know this, and we're kept in constant suspense about who will survive the disaster and how.
As with Imperium, Harris does a great job evoking ancient Rome. Rome, described accurately, is disturbing. People own other people, and can kill them with impunity. Violence is part of the culture, and everyone is only a knife-thrust or poisoned cup away from death. The Roman military juggernaut is omnipresent, dominating everything. Money buys sex, extravagant whims, and lawmakers. I'm sorry, were we talking about Rome?
I think that engineers would like this book. They would really appreciate the description of Attilius's efforts to debug his network. Also, if you like being totally immersed in a different world, you'd enjoy this.
I'm apparently a big fan of Robert Harris. I've read every novel he's published so far. One interesting thing about him is that he writes in several different genres, which you don't see a lot. Usually, a person is just a mystery writer or just a romance writer, and they don't stray outside their area. But Harris has written books in all these areas:
* What-if history: Fatherland (what if World War II ended in an armistice and Nazi Germany continued to the 1960s); Archangel (what if Stalin had an heir)
* Historical: Enigma (cracking the German secret code in WWII), Imperium (Cicero, the famous Roman orator)
* Modern political thriller: Ghost (ghostwriter for fictional Tony Blair discovers his secret)
Maybe the common denominator is politics, but I doubt I would have read so many books about politics.
This novel puts us back in Rome. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in ash and rock for more than a thousand years. The eruption was a complete surprise to the thousands of victims: they didn't even know Vesuvius was a volcano, never mind an active one. (Side note: One of my grandmothers was from Scafati, a small town near Pompeii. I doubt if she ever knew about Pompeii, though.) This was probably the most famous natural disaster in history, and a good setting for a disaster story.
However, Harris doesn’t give us an ordinary disaster story. Most of the book is about the efforts of Marcus Attilius, the newly assigned aquarius – literally, a water-bearer, like the astrological sign, but here meaning an engineer in charge of the local aqueducts – to figure out why the water has stopped flowing to the towns around Neapolis, the new naval base. Roman aqueducts were marvels of engineering, carrying fresh water from the mountains in and around Italy hundreds of miles to drier areas. So, this book is actually a high-tech thriller that happens to take place in Roman times.
Attilius manages to uncover not only the physical problems with the aqueduct, but also a major political and financial scandal involving systematic bribery by a nouveau riche former slave who, thank heavens, has a beautiful daughter. Events unfold in the two days before the eruption, and Harris keeps reminding us that the sundial is ticking. We know that the whole area is going to be destroyed, but none of the characters know this, and we're kept in constant suspense about who will survive the disaster and how.
As with Imperium, Harris does a great job evoking ancient Rome. Rome, described accurately, is disturbing. People own other people, and can kill them with impunity. Violence is part of the culture, and everyone is only a knife-thrust or poisoned cup away from death. The Roman military juggernaut is omnipresent, dominating everything. Money buys sex, extravagant whims, and lawmakers. I'm sorry, were we talking about Rome?
I think that engineers would like this book. They would really appreciate the description of Attilius's efforts to debug his network. Also, if you like being totally immersed in a different world, you'd enjoy this.
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