Books to Read Before You Die: Pharaoh is Intoxicating Historical Novel That Reads Like Fantasy Science Fiction

Polish intellectual Boleslaw Prus penned his masterpiece more than 100 years ago. It remains an amazing read today

After turning the last page of Pharaoh, I found myself grasping for the best adjective to describe what I had just read. Mesmerizing? Spellbinding? Enthralling?

The word I settle upon is: Intoxicating.

This is a historical novel that imparts a feel of being genuinely transported to that period of ancient history represented in the narrative. That’s no small feat since the setting is the last days of ancient Pharaonic 20th Dynasty which ended circa 1077 B.C., more than 3,000 years ago.

It was a real world, true, but ancient Egyptian culture was so exotic and infused with the presence of their deities, sorcery and esoteric paradigm it might as well has been an alien planet or some weirdly realized alternate dimension vis-à-vis our modern world.

What I found stunning about Pharaoh is that author didn’t merely capture and recreate it for readers — it’s almost as if he channeled an actual experience and then somehow transferred it to us through this brilliantly rendered…