Under the volcano again

In 2003, Robert Harris published Pompeii: A Novel, which for vitality and entertainment and the atmosphere of the decadent Roman world around the Bay of Naples in the first century AD can hardly be beaten. The great eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 and the destruction of the playground city of Pompeii is made even more cataclysmic by Harris’s angle on it. Not until nearly the end of the book does he describe the mushroom cloud, the blood-red lightning, the choking ash four feet deep, the terrifying withdrawal of the sea, the darkness and the final silence.

Harris concentrates on the early warnings, the disappearance of the drinking water, the drying up of the sparkling fountains, the mysterious blockage of the Matrix, one of the wonders of the Roman world that carried the water of life across Italy. The mountain watches as it had watched Hercules in mythical times trying to drive back the giants who had wracked the place with fire.