Meanwhile, the tracks of a major railway are being laid not far away — an ambitious piece of infrastructure, backed by various international interests. Unsworth’s characters are kind enough to spell out the project’s financial and geopolitical implications, but for Somerville the railway presents a more immediate problem: unless something is done to slow it down or redirect it, the tracks will soon cut straight through his dig.

While the dig still looks so unpromising, part of him feels almost relieved to have his ambitions foiled by circumstances beyond his control. But when he starts turning up evidence that points to a momentous discovery — one that will necessitate a rewriting of the Assyrian empire’s dramatic last days, bringing him fame and fortune in the process — he naturally tries to disrupt the railway’s progress.

The cast around Somerville includes an empty-headed, exhorting wife, a ruthless businessman, a couple of spies and oil experts, and Jehar, a local adviser who is trying to win a beautiful Circassian girl called Ninanna from her father. By telling her fantastic stories, Jehar has already won the girl’s heart; he just needs 100 gold coins to pay off her father. And so he hatches a plan that neatly dovetails with Somerville’s own increasingly desperate state of mind.

It’s all terrifically racy in theory — and who knows, perhaps it might work as a film? — but Unsworth fails to make us believe. His prose is elegant and sure, as ever, but his characters are puppets and they are made to do so much explaining — archaeological, financial, geopolitical — that the exercise quickly becomes wearisome.

Unsworth has worked hard to match his plot to his larger themes — the power of storytelling (ironic, really), the effects of obsession and human avidity — but, unlike Jehar, he has forgotten the novelist’s chief responsibility, which is to seduce.

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