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Rarely can a human career have approached so close to fairytale as that of Heinrich Schliemann. Born into poverty in a north German village, his imagination fired by the fables and legends told him by his father, he declared at the age of seven that one day he would find the site of ancient Troy. He never wavered in this intention. He amassed a fortune while still in his 30s, retired from business and went on to dig at Hissarlik and to discover not only the fabled city of Hector and Paris, but the priceless hoard of jewellery and gold that had lain hidden there for thousands of years — Priam’s treasure, as he called it. It is Peter Ackroyd’s remarkable achievement, in this complex and fascinating novel, to take a figure who was already a legend in his own lifetime, and recreate him as a creature of myth; indeed, an epic hero, able to shape truth to his vision, to call on the powers of the gods still residing among the ruins of the city. His Heinrich Obermann — a name for a demigod — has one unswerving goal: all his being is concentrated on demonstrating to the world, in the teeth of general opinion to the contrary, that Homer’s account of the Trojan war is a true relation of events and that the Trojan warriors were Europeans, not Asians, and of noble race.