Riddle of the Labyrinth

The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation

By: Margalit Fox

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Paperback | 24 July 2014 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
352 Pages

Age
0

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9 x 2.4

Paperback

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The full story of the race to decipher the world's greatest puzzle.

The decoding of Linear B is one of the world's greatest stories: from the discovery of a cache of ancient tablets recording a lost prehistoric language to the dramatic solution of the riddle nearly seventy years later, it exerts a mesmerising pull on the imagination.

But this captivating story is missing a crucial piece. Two men have dominated Linear B in popular history: Arthur Evans, the intrepid Victorian archaeologist who unearthed Linear B at Knossos and Michael Ventris, the dashing young amateur who produced a solution. But there was a third figure: Alice Kober, without whose painstaking work, recorded on pieces of paper clipped from hymn-sheets and magazines and stored in cigarette boxes in her Brooklyn loft, Linear B might still remain a mystery.

Drawing on Kober's own papers - only made available recently - Margalit Fox provides the final piece of the enigma, and along the way reveals how you decipher a language when you know neither its grammar nor its alphabet as well as the stories behind other ancient languages, like the dancing-man Rongorongo of Easter Island.

Industry Reviews

An engrossing detective story of driven personalities, hidden clues, perseverance and intuition [Fox] has uncovered a remarkable woman who had been buried by history * Sunday Times *
[Fox's] enthusiasm is compelling when talking about the raw inventive brainpower of the code-breakers, their unswerving passion, and the magical way that a set of lines and curves in clay can be transformed into something with meaning * Observer *
The author's triumph lies in her presentation of this complex subject, narrated with the pace and excitement of a detective story * Country Life *
Truly memerising. It's also a lovely testament to language and the history of linguistics -- Lesley McDowell * Sunday Herald *
A nail-biting intellectual and cultural adventure -- Ian Finlayson * The Times *
Praise for Talking Hands

'Fox provides an exhaustive, energetic and frequently elegant tour through the world of sign language and sign linguistics ... informed by the quiet passion of a natural teacher for her subject' * New York Times *
A captivating and important book, minutely researched and vividly narrated -- Oliver Sacks

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