Author(s): Tom Harper

Fiction

"c1250 BC.The thousand ships of Greece set sail for Troy.Aboard are fabled heroes such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus and Achilles but also a detachment from Crete led by Idomeneus, grandson of the legendary King Minos. Few will return. 1941.While excavating the ruins of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete, English archaeologist John Pemberton uncovers a strange cave which seems to have been excavated more than three thousand years ago. A stone plaque carved with Minoan script hints at the cave s important history, but the language is unknown and has resisted fifty years of attempts to decipher it. Before Pemberton can learn more, the German invasion of Crete begins and he is forced to flee for his life across the island. 1943.Klaus Belzin, a major in the elite Sonderkommando Rosenberg, scours occupied Greece for the identities and assets of local Jews.But when he breaks into a Byzantine monastery which he suspects of harbouring fugitives, he finds an ancient manuscript- part of a lost poem hitherto known only by references in later authors. It continues the tale begun in the Iliad and offers tantalising hints to the location of the mythical White Island where the heroes of