This is Golding's last novel, left by him in draft when he died suddenly a few years ago. It is set, almost bizarrely, in the Graeco Roman world and much of it hinges around the Oracle of Delphi; the central character is a girl called Arieka, who tells her story in the first person. This was scarcely Golding's natural territory, and in any case it is hard not to believe that if he had lived he would have reworked much of the rather wooden, implausible dialogue. Flaubert came close to this world and subject matter in Salammbo, but Golding was no Flaubert, and at times the writing does rather suggest an unlikely collaboration between Robert Graves and Marie Corelli.