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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 Greeces Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europes 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 Foxs riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegeanthe era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helento the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers.



About the Author

Margalit Fox

Margalit Fox originally trained as a cellist and a linguist before pursuing journalism. As a senior writer in The New York Times's celebrated Obituary News Department, she wrote the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. Winner of the William Saroyan Prize for Literature and author of three previous books, "Conan Doyle for the Defense," "The Riddle of the Labyrinth" and "Talking Hands," Fox lives in Manhattan with her husband, the writer and critic George Robinson.



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