Try free for 30 days
-
The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $22.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery.
Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean-the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen-to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the decipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.
Critic Reviews
"Fox is a talented storyteller, and she creates an atmosphere of almost nail-biting suspense. . . . This one deserves shelf space along such classics of the genre as Simon Singh's The Code Book." (Booklist Starred Review)
What listeners say about The Riddle of the Labyrinth
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Robyn
- 18-09-2023
Excellent in every way
Margalit Fox has done a masterful job of taking a complex topic and making it readily comprehensible to readers without any knowledge of ancient languages or earlier examples of 'crack[ing] an ancient code'. The life of Dr Alice Kober, whose tireless and painstaking work was a major contributor to the eventual deciphering of Linear B, is a sad story of brilliance constrained by 1930s and 1940s attitudes to professional women and, eventually, ill health. Pam Ward is the ideal narrator and manages all the foreign language words and sounds effortlessly.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!