The Third Translation [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Matt Bondurant (Author), Nick Sullivan (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2005

An ancient mystery, a hidden language, and the secrets of a bizarre Egyptian sect collide in modern-day London in this ingenious novel of seduction, conspiracy, and betrayal alter Rothschild is an American Egyptologist living in London and charged by the British Museum with the task of unlocking the ancient riddle of the Stela of Paser, one of the last remaining real-life hieroglyphic mysteries in existence today. The secrets of the stela-a centuries-old funerary stone-have evaded scholars for thousands of years due to the stela's cryptic reference to a third translation:

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the latest novel trying to capitalize on the amazing success of The Da Vinci Code by positing an ancient mystery, contemporary scholars, rare documents, greedy collectors, and a quasi-academic protagonist. In this case he's an American Egyptologist living in London who's got less than a week to unlock the secrets of the Stela of Paser, a funerary stone whose references to a "third way" of deciphering the hieroglyphics inscribed on the stone have teased, tempted and eluded would-be translators for centuries.

Walter Rothschild has sacrificed a wife, a child, and many of the other things that make life worth living to pursue a passion cultivated in childhood and encouraged by his own father. Less than a week before his grant runs out and the Stela of Paser returns to its dusty basement in the British Museum, Walter is seduced and drugged by a mysterious young woman who steals a precious document from the Museum; in search of her and the papyrus scroll, Rothschild encounters a cult of would-be mystics who will stop at nothing to get him to decipher the Stela and reveal its secrets--especially those that promise a "third way" between life and death, "the endless quest of the ancient kings." While Walter's efforts are admirable, he is basically a boring, fretful, and regretful man who fails to engage the reader. That's too bad, for otherwise this is a beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and finely detailed novel based somewhat on the author's own obsession with the Stela. But if you share his passion for Egyptology, and want a more learned discourse on its arcana than the Amelia Peabody mysteries provide, The Third Translation is well worth reading. --Jane Adams --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Walter Rothschild, a middle-aged Egyptologist at the British Museum, has abandoned his wife and child to spend his time obsessively poring over the dusty inscriptions of a dead civilization. He is forced to reconnect with life when he is seduced by a mysterious woman who then steals an ancient papyrus containing the key to the enigmatic hieroglyphics of the Stela of Paser. The conspiracy trail leads Walter to a modern-day cult of the Egyptian sun god, Aten, protected by a menacing team of pro wrestlers. In Bondurant's ambitious debut, a sprawling picaresque is infused with mythic resonance by linking it to ancient Egyptian literature and mythology and to concepts in avant-garde physics, including black holes, general relativity and string theory. The author has an inventive imagination and an ardent feel for place; much of the book is a prose poem to London's squalid demimonde. Though some may feel that Bondurant's erudition and philosophical engagement ("the only way... to make sense of the magnitude of the time and the space and the span of humanity on earth is to grasp onto the one thing that gives you a clear look") slow the pace of his mystery, the success of previous literary novels of suspense bodes very well for this one.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Sound Library; Unabridged edition (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792735595
• ISBN-13: 978-0792735595
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.1 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,929,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matt Bondurant's new novel The Night Swimmer (Scribner) will be published in January, 2012. His second novel The Wettest County in the World (Scribner 2008) was a New York Times Editor's Pick, and San Francisco Chronicle Best 50 Books of the Year. His first novel The Third Translation (Hyperion 2005) was an international bestseller, translated into 14 languages worldwide. A former John Gardner Fellow in Fiction at Bread Loaf, Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State, and Walter E. Dakin Fellow at Sewanee, Matt's short fiction has been published in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The New England Review, and Glimmer Train, and he has recently held residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He currently lives in Texas. (mattbondurant.com)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sex, drugs and archaeology?, June 4, 2005

By 

Edward Alexander Gerster "miamibooks" (South Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Third Translation (Hardcover)

It really is unfair to market this novel in any way attached to THE DAVINCI CODE, either good or bad. It really has no similairities which is both good and bad. The plot moves forward well enough, and the scholarship regarding Egyptian mysticism, heiroglyphics and the Stela of Paser are well researched--but the protagonist is neither a hero or anti-hero, in fact he is pretty much the most poorly developed character in the book. And the plot resolution is so empty and open ended to make you question where the author was trying to go. Not a bad novel overall, and I see the author can handle both the heady world of acedemia and the depths of seedy sex and drug culture to equal proportion, yet a bit unsatisfying.

163 of 188 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretty bad, April 1, 2005

By 

Colorado Springs reader "Colorado Springs reader" (Colorado Springs) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Third Translation (Hardcover)

Maybe I just don't get out much, but I'm really surprised that writing of such abysmal quality actually gets published. There are the repetitions: page 3 - 'hieratic and demotic scripts, which are essentially the shorthand or cursive form of heiroglyphics', page 14 - 'hieratic and demotic scripts, which are essentially the cursive and everyday form of hieroglyphic writing'. (Do publishing houses still have editors on staff? Do editors actually do any work?) There is incorrect grammar. There is some of the most ridiculous, pointless plotting I've ever encountered (the narrator decides he needs to talk to his friend Alan Henry. Alan Henry is not home. The narrator tries, unsuccessfully, to get the super to let him in to his friend's apartment. Finally he uses a chisel to break in. Then nothing happens, the narrator leaves, because, DUHH, his friend is not home. ???? And why is the friend almost always referred to as Alan Henry, instead of Alan? Very weird.) But the real killer for me is the inexorable awfulness of the prose. How about this? '...ever since then it seemed as if the spirit of Zenobia bore down upon me, a puzzling sensation that shifted from bemused tolerance to possible reconciliation to straight vengeance'? The sensation of the spirit of Zenobia bearing down upon him shifts from tolerance to reconciliation etc.? Well, this would puzzle me too. And this isn't to worst of it ... this is just the point at which I decided I'd had as much bad writing as I could take.

It seems to me that perhaps this would have been a perfectly nice first draft for a novel; I just wish someone had whipped it into at least a marginally readable product before I plopped down $22.95 for it.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gem that almost hides itself!, August 21, 2005

By 

Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Third Translation (Hardcover)

The Third Translation is not an easy book to like!

Our hero, Walter Rothschild, an Egyptologist at the British Museum, is an ineffectual, pathetic obsessed man, driven only by a passion for his science. Boring and weak, ineffectual as a parent, spouse and lover, indecisive, introverted, fretful and naïve, Walter generates only a vague, disinterested feeling of sympathy in the reader. The plot, on the other hand, at least contains the elements of a story that one might expect should unfold as a thriller! With the help of a powerful cocktail of drugs, alcohol and uninhibited sex, Erin, a beautiful young goth, steals a papyrus from the museum that Walter thinks may contain a vital clue to the translation of the Stela of Paser, a centuries old funerary stone. A rather stumbling investigation leads Walter to the acquaintance of Penelope, a staffer from the British Library, who helps him track the thief into the lair of a modern day Egyptian cult.

Like the earnest, trendy young people who mill about London's arty Soho district where some of Bondurant's tale is based, The Third Translation is much too ardent and takes itself entirely too seriously. Or, at least, that's what I thought at first! But, it was Walter's daughter, Zenobia, indulging in a mouthful of babbling double-speak that made me realize Bondurant was yanking on the chain of London's intelligentsia sub-culture. She spoke of her new business venture, a women's magazine:

"While I was doing my master's at Columbia, she said, I discovered that most women's studies and humanities departments were engaged in a form of hypocritical liberal fascism, victimization, and debilitating group-think strategies that eventually were swamped in a morass of ambiguity and academic jargon that prohibited the real ideas present to make a dent in anything beyond the theoretical models. This magazine is intended to change all that."

By this point in the novel, it was quite clear that Bondurant was far too skilled a writer to have constructed such meaningless drivel by mistake so, I concluded that he had set out to create it on purpose. Do not judge The Third Translation by the standards of what you were expecting to read. Rather allow it to be what it wants to be. Once that "aha" light came on for me, the novel, like the endless crescendo in a Rossini overture, built in beauty and moved from one strength to another.

And what exactly IS The Third Translation? An eloquent, dramatic description of the current understanding of translation of heiroglyphics from a purely scientific point of view; an even more eloquent philosophical statement about heiroglyphics as a reflection of ancient Egyptian culture; an unrelated series of poetic, artistic asides that use certain features of modern cosmological theories of the universe as metaphors for Egyptian writing; a masterful, darkly comic, literary criticism of London life; an emotional, deeply moving description of a few days in Walter's life as he comes to grips with his inadequacies and failings and attempts to establish a renewed relationship of sorts with his estranged daughter; and, finally, a modest mystery that, in large part, remains unsolved at the conclusion of the narrative. This lack of a real conclusion to the story is, paradoxically, still quite satisfying!

Like many other books, enjoyment of The Third Translation does not come with the first page. But, patience and perseverance will be rewarded with a real treasure!