Customer Reviews:
 the curse of the sacred veil... November 4, 2008
An absolute blood-fest.
A tale of desire, lust, love and fury.
It's a novel on a grand scale, panoramic - an epic.
Tracing a story of blind unfulfilled love through a period of insurrection set in the fading glory of a once powerful city state, the plot fairly rips along.
Featuring huge sweeping battle scenes and bloody massacres - illustrated with descriptions of barbaric cruelty, canibalism and littered with gratuitous violence.
It's primitive, full of symbolism, savagery and blood-lust.
The main protagonist, Matho, a brute of a man - a leader of men, is driven to the verge of insanity whilst obsessively seeking to fulfil his lust and desire for the pure beauty of Salammbo - a vestal virgin, an innocent and a priestess.
All is here - loves confusion, corruption of power, the sweetness of victory, the bitterness of defeat, barbaric revenge and the tragic fulfilment of a prophesy - the curse of the sacred veil.
 Carthage April 21, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Although this book is called Salammbo, she doesn't appear in it that much, and her story is just an incidental sideline to the main story. If you have read Flaubert before you will find this book somewhat different. If you like a bog standard historical novel you may find this tale a bit too exotic.
Salammbo is set in the second century BC. Carthage won't pay its mercenaries after the Punic Wars, and thus starts the Mercenary War. What this book shows is the horrors of war, and man's inhumanity to man. Prisoners of war are crucified or trampled underfoot by elephants amongst other indignities. Carthage is under siege at one stage and the inhabitants practice human sacrifice to appease the gods. The mercenaries that see this look on in shocked dismay, only for some of them to later carry out cannibalism.
This book is bloody and gory, and the story will keep you absorbed. It would make an excellent movie, but once again it won't be a book for everyones tastes.
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