The Visitors: A Novel

by Sally Beauman

Overview

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.

In 1922, when eleven year-old Lucy is sent to Egypt to recuperate from typhoid, she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist. The friendship draws the impressionable young girl into the thrilling world of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter, who are searching for the tomb of boy pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.

A haunting tale of love and loss, The Visitors retells the legendary story of Carter and Carnarvon’s hunt and their historical discovery, witnessed through the eyes of a vulnerable child whose fate becomes entangled in their dramatic quest. As events unfold, Lucy will discover the lengths some people will go to fulfill their deepest desires—and the lies that become the foundation of their lives.

Intensely atmospheric, The Visitors recalls the decadence of Egypt’s aristocratic colonial society, and illuminates the obsessive, daring men willing to risk everything—even their sanity—to claim a piece of the ancient past. As fascinating today as it was nearly a century ago, the search for King Tut’s tomb is made vivid and immediate in Sally Beauman’s skilled hands. A dazzling feat of imagination, The Visitors is a majestic work of historical fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062302700
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.22(d)

About the Author

Sally Beauman is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist who began her career at New York magazine. Her internationally bestselling novels, including Rebecca's Tale, her sequel to Daphne du Maurier's iconic work, have been translated into more than twenty languages. She has written for The New Yorker, the Sunday Times, and numerous other leading periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

July 25, 1944

Place of Birth:

Torquay, Devon, England

Education:

B.A. in English Literature, Hons Cantab, 1966; M. A., Hons Cantab, 1969

Editorial Reviews

A book of astounding scholarship on Egyptology and the 1920s…. The novel’s…writing and characterizations are golden.

Booklist(starred review)

Atmospheric…. Sally Beauman’s fact-inspired story plunges readers into the thrilling search for King Tut’s tomb in 1922 Egypt.

Parade

Romance, deception, and colonial decadence.

More magazine

[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 (London)

Interesting, unusual and informative, it is greatly enjoyable.

Literary Review

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

06/01/2014
In best-selling author Beauman's (Destiny; Rebecca's Tale) latest novel, an elderly woman remembers archaeologist Howard Carter and the opening of King Tut's tomb in 1922. Eleven-year-old Lucy is shipped off to Egypt to recuperate after her mother's death from typhoid leaves her in the cold and distant care of her father. Soon after her arrival, she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist who introduces her to the exciting and politically fraught world of the Valley of the Kings. There are lots of familiar characters here, including Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, who should appeal to fans of Egyptology. The mystery at the center of the plot, whether Carter and company opened the boy king's tomb illegally, keeps the story going through a few less successful subplots. Beauman particularly shines in the development of her characters: Carter is mercurial and difficult but fascinating, and the elderly Lucy is delightfully opinionated and great fun to read. VERDICT The novel isn't without its problems. Sometimes Lucy sounds a bit too grown-up for her age, and one plot line with Nicola, Lucy's governess-turned-stepmother, is tied up too neatly. But fans of the author's work, archeology, or historical sagas won't mind. [See Prepub Alert, 1/28/14.]—Liz Kirchhoff, Barrington Area Lib., IL

Library Journal

2014-05-07
This historical novel approaches, slantwise and at considerable length, the 20th century's most sensational archaeological event.The most obvious way to fictionalize the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb would be to have the major players tell the tale—Howard Carter, principal archaeologist, and his financier and mentor, Lord Carnarvon (resident earl of Highclere Castle, of Downton Abbey fame). Beauman's (The Sisters Mortland, 2006, etc.) more original approach—have a character at the margins carry the narrative weight—is riskier. The narrator, Lucy, is 11 when she first arrives in Egypt after the untimely death of her mother. Her trip is financed by her wealthy American maternal grandparents, since her widowed father, a Cambridge classics don, cannot cope with a child. Through a new friend, Frances, whose parents are archaeologists, Lucy hovers on the fringes of the dig, which includes the irascible, hard-drinking Carter; the affable, high-minded Lord Carnarvon; and their entourage of scientists, curators, wives and lovers. Abetted by Lucy's snoopy spinster guardian, Miss Mack, the girls hone their eavesdropping skills on the scandals surrounding glamorous divorcée Poppy, one of the hangers-on. Forced to return to the gloomy home of her father, Lucy is schooled in the art of manipulation by her conniving governess, Nicola, soon to be her stepmother. Then Lucy escapes back to Egypt just as Lord Carnarvon and Carter reveal their find, exceptional not merely for the magnitude of its treasure, but for the fact that the tomb has remained, through three millennia, virtually unmolested by looters. The ensuing "Tutmania" has unintended consequences for both men. Lucy's juvenile point of view is interspersed with the retrospective musings of nonagenarian Lucy, as a documentary filmmaker pesters her to divulge the untold story of the Tut dig. Since the main event is recounted mostly through hearsay, Lucy and her fellow supernumeraries have to be interesting in their own rights for this novel to succeed, and perhaps by dint of the sheer number of pages they occupy, they almost are.There are riches here, but it takes patience to unearth them.

Kirkus Reviews