An interesting historical/fantasy-mystery. Some outlandish and anachronistic details may be a bit much for some, but it's all good to me. One weakness is the revelation at the book's end of the true identity of one of the main characters, which is so bizarre and thematically out of step with the rest of the novel that I don't quite know what to make of it. ( )

John Lemprière, un erudito joven de Jersey, acude a Londres en 1788, tras la muerte de su padre, para reclamar su herencia. Obsesionado por la manera en que los mitos clásicos parecen irrumpir en su vida (su padre, como Acteón, ha muerto destrozado por los perros que guardaban a la virginal hija del noble del lugar mientras se bañaba desnuda; una prostituta ha sido asesinada con una lluvia de oro fundido, en una clara referencia a la seducción de Dánae por Zeus), consulta a dos sabios doctores que le aconsejan que escriba un diccionario clásico.

Nonsense and very long nonsense at that. Set in the 18th century between London and Paris, the book links the East India Company, the French Revolution and Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. However the author has developed a style which values words over meaning and erudition over storyline. Try throwing in to the mix the fact that some of the central characters are autonoma while others can fly. There are so many other books that your time would be better spent elsewhere. ( )

I closed the book after 200 pages. It was more than enough. ( )

An extraordinary book in every sense - this one is a challenge both to read and to review. To start, how should we categorise it? It mixes so many genres - historical fiction, fantasy, classical allusions, grand conspiracy thriller, parody and even romance - a real postmodern mash-up.

I first heard of Norfolk several years ago when I read A.S. Byatt's book of literary criticism On Histories and Stories, in which she extolled him as one of the cleverest young writers around. This is probably the book she had most in mind, though The Pope's Rhinoceros is equally complex and ambitious.

Some of the pivotal events are real enough, the story of the East India Company, the siege of La Rochelle and the build-up to the French revolution, but the conceit of Norfolk's story is so outrageous that it can only be seen as a sort of self-parody. The two books it reminded me most of, for very different reasons, were Gravity's Rainbow and The Count of Monte Cristo.

The hero (or at least the pivotal character) is John Lemprière, a young scholar from Jersey whose primary interest is studying Greek and Roman classics. His story is interleaved with a grand conspiracy - in Norfolk's version of history the East India Company is almost ruined when its first expedition in 1600 comes back with a cargo of pepper which is worthless in London because the Dutch have flooded the market, and its investors are rescued by a shadowy "cabbala" of traders from the Huguenot free port of La Rochelle who are unable to trade with the East directly. Most of the action takes place in the 1780s, when their descendants draw Lemprière into their intrigues by staging reenactments of scenes from the classics, the first of which involves the grisly murder of his father by fox-hounds. They also persuade him to start writing a dictionary of classical mythology (this is also something real, as are some of Lemprière's biographical details).

The plot gets more and more complex, and veers further into the realms of fantasy, but Norfolk clearly loves the classics and has a fine command of arcane language. For all that, much of the book is quite readable and the storytelling is compulsive. ( )