Book description
In 523 BC, the Persian emperor Cambyses dispatched an army across
Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle of Amun at Siwa. Legend
has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Sand Sea his army was
overwhelmed by a sandstorm and destroyed. Fifty thousand men were lost.
Two and a half thousand years later a mutilated corpse is washed up
on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely
murdered in Cairo, and an eminent British archaeologist is found dead
at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
At first the incidents appear unconnected. Inspector Yusuf Khalifa
of the Luxor police is suspicious, however. And so too is the
archaeologist's daughter, Tara Mullray. As each seeks to uncover the
truth, they find themselves thrown together in a desperate race for
survival - one that forces them to confront not only present-day
adversaries but also ghosts from their own pasts.
From a mysterious fragment of ancient hieroglyphic text to rumours
of a fabulous lost tomb in the Theban Hills, from the shimmering
waters of the Nile to the dusty backstreets of Cairo, Khalifa and
Mullray are drawn ever deeper into a labyrinth of violence, intrigue
and betrayal. It is a path that will eventually lead them into the
forbidding, barren heart of the western desert, and the answer to one
of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world . . .
At once an adrenaline-packed thriller and a wonderfully evocative
archaeological adventure, THE LOST ARMY OF CAMBYSES marks the début
of a great new storyteller.
Paul Sussman's two great passions have always been writing and
archaeology. He fulfils the former by working as a freelance journalist
and the latter by spending two months of each year excavating in Egypt.
He is thirty-five and lives in London with his wife. The Lost Army of
Cambyses is his first novel.
