Pompeii
By Robert Harris

     The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 has long been the subject of many novels, TV shows, and documentaries, and it might seem as if yet another description of people running for their lives as boiling lava rains down on them is one too many. But Robert Harris is a better writer than that, and here is a new look at an old subject. You may be expecting fire to be the theme, but in fact it is water, and as young engineer Marcus Attilius arrives from Rome to replace his mysteriously missing predecessor, there is something amiss with the mighty Aqua Augusta. His team resents him being there, and the powerful and corrupt Ampliatus tries to cut him in on his latest deal. As the decadent resort swelters under the August sun, things are going more and more awry. Sulphurous smells, water drying up or tasting bitter, and it is going to take all Attilius' strength of character and skills to try and find out what is wrong and stay in one piece. But will realization of the danger he is in come too late?

     Harris has taken a big subject and skewed it to be a novel about a water engineer's viewpoint on the eruption, while at the same time making a wry and topical point about a superpower brought to its knees by something beyond its control. Ancient Rome is a popular subject for novels, and too often I find that they stress the similarities with modern life, while omitting the vast gulf that separates the ancient world from the one we know. Greed, cruelty, heroism and terror are universal, but here is a world where pride in the water system and central heating runs parallel with slaves being thrown to the eels, sacrifices to strange deities and a total ignorance of volcanology. We the readers know what is coming, but the tension builds in tiny amounts as one thing goes awry after another until the volcano blows its top. Before I started reading this novel, I couldn't imagine how such a well-known event could be made anew as an original piece of fiction but it is. One to read and savor.