Peter Ackroyd’s new novel deals with Troy not in Homeric times, but in the 19th century, when the lost city was discovered by the German archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, at Hissarlik in Turkey. Ackroyd’s protagonist is called Heinrich Obermann, but he is Schliemann, more and less. Ackroyd has used the change of name to take some thoroughgoing liberties with the historical figure, not least in the fate that he has in store for him — which is rather more abrupt than Schliemann himself suffered.
The irony of rewriting history where Schliemann is concerned is not lost on Ackroyd. The great archeologist was himself profligate with the truth. Obermann’s main characteristic in common with his historical model, as well as a Greek wife called Sophia, is his blustering insistence that everything he finds at Hissarlik must be linked to the Iliad of Homer. When a piece of wall is discovered, it becomes the “tower of Andromache”; as an inconveniently pedantic American archeologist who visits the site remarks: “I know the passage, Mr Obermann. But I’ll be darned if I can see the tower.”
Where Ackroyd diverges more starkly from the facts, it is in his characteristic “psychogeographical” mode, in which a place, like a person, can be a character in the story. Sophia says that Troy “has a strange hold upon us all”. Its hold on Obermann seems responsible for more than a bit of archeological sleight of hand. Ackroyd imports a Mrs Rochester theme to Turkey, and the denouement has the atmosphere of a thriller, with innocents running for their lives.
Like all melodrama, The Fall of Troy relies on the reader’s indulgence to work its charms. Obermann emerges ever more clearly as a self-deluding monster, but it is hard to avoid the thought that Schliemann’s Troy was already an intriguing enough story, without the grand guignol treatment. Ultimately, Ackroyd’s Troy falls because the balancing act between biography and histrionics is too difficult even for a writer of his powers to pull off. Then again, a tightrope-walker doesn’t have to get to the other side to be exciting, and Ackroyd is never less than that.
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David Horspool is an editor on The Times Literary Supplement. The Fall of Troy is available at the Books First price of £15.99 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585