There are many Turks who believe that the capture of Constantinople was a just vengeance for the fall of Troy. The Greeks were at last made to pay for their perfidy. [loc. 2376]
Reread: my review from 2010 is here. I remembered nothing at all about this novel! Apparently I purchased a paperback copy in 2007: as with almost all of his other novels, no Kindle edition is available.
Ackroyd bases his novel on the life of Heinrich Schliemann, who first excavated Troy, and his marriage to a much younger woman, a Greek (famously chosen on the basis of a photograph and 'Homeric spirit'). Ackroyd's fictional archaeologist is named Heinrich Obermann, and he has all of Schliemann's flaws and more: he's avaricious, racist, an intellectual fraud and a bigamist. He goes by his gut feeling rather than solid archaeological methodology, and he refuses to accept evidence which contradicts his own opinions.
We see him from his wife Sophia's perspective: she doesn't love him, but is determined to make the marriage work. She finds purpose in the excavation of the ancient city, and colludes with Obermann's deceits -- until she discovers that he has lied to her, as well as to everyone else.
I liked the way that Ackroyd wove in some of Schliemann's tall stories (smuggling Priam's treasure away from the site in Sophia's shawl) and I found Obermann's fate rather more satisfactory than Schliemann's: hubris and nemesis.
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