Publication date: 2 November 2022

Continuing his journey through the history of humankind, Noam wakes up from a long sleep on the banks of the Nile in 1650 BC and launches into an exhilarating tour of Memphis, the capital of the two kingdoms of Egypt. Times have certainly changed. From brothels to the house of the dead and from Hebrew districts to the Pharoah’s palace, he discovers an extraordinary civilisation handed down on rolls of papyrus; a civilisation that worships the River Nile from which it arose, that mummifies the dead, invents the afterlife and builds temples and pyramids to gain access to eternity. But Noam’s heart is raging, his mind occupied by one idea: to get even with his enemy and at last find contented immortality with his beloved Noura.

In Volume III of Crossing Time, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt takes readers to Ancient Egypt, a civilisation that will flourish for more than three thousand years. Replete with surprises, The Sun Goes Down reconstructs the full vibrancy of this world, whose traces our modern world has preserved but which has nevertheless remained an interlude, sublime and enigmatic in equal measure, in the History of humankind.