Part adventure, part romance, and part tall tale-BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT is the "fictional autobiography" of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a real-life 19th-century explorer, circus performer, and shameless self-promoter. He narrates the story at the end of his life, aboard a ship bound for the coast of Africa and his final, fatal adventure. Belzoni's voice is bombastic and beautiful, and his narrative is both an unabashed love story and a ripping yarn. Plus, it's mostly lies. The real-life Belzoni pillaged Egypt while Lord Elgin was pillaging Greece-only a whole lot more colorfully. Born in Padua, raised in Rome, and educated by the Capuchins, he stood nearly seven feet tall and easily found work in England as a circus strongman. His strength and agility, along with his expertise in hydraulics and pyrotechnics, brought him to the attention of of Mohammed 'Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, and from there it was short work to begin ransacking the Valley of the Kings. BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT brings Belzoni back to vivid life, yarning about his exploits in a series of cliff-hangers involving pyramids and catacombs, poison gas and carnival freaks, heartless popes and Napoleon's army. To say nothing of his loyal companion, the Irish orphan James Curtin, and his one true love, the faithful Sarah Banne Belzoni.
About the Author: Born and raised in the remote heart of upstate New York, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. His first novel, FINN-the secret history of Huckleberry Finn's father-was named an American Library Association Notable Book and was chosen as one of the year's best books by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor. It won the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Sargent First Novel Prize. His second novel, KINGS OF THE EARTH-a powerful tale of life, death, and family in rural America, based on a true story-was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and led the 2010 Summer Reading List at O, The Oprah Magazine. Clinch has lectured and taught widely, in settings as varied as the National Council of Teachers of English, Williams College, the Mark Twain House and Museum, and Pennsylvania State University. In 2008 he organized a benefit reading for the financially ailing Twain House that literally saved the institution from bankruptcy. Jon Clinch lives with his wife in the Green Mountains of Vermont. They have one daughter.