- Would you be brave enough to be the first person to crawl into a three-thousand-year-old tomb through a hole chipped in a sealed doorway in the middle of the Egyptian desert?
- The author wrote seven different beginnings for this novel: Maya overseeing the arrangement of Tutankhamun’s tomb; Eve as a young girl meeting Howard Carter for the first time; Porchy and Eve spying on one of their father’s séances; Eve traveling to Egypt for the first time; the crash in 1935; Eve attending the British Museum exhibition in 1972 and meeting Ana Mansour there; and the current one. How would it have affected the story if she had used one of the others instead?
- What do you make of the allegations that Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter were gay? If true, can you imagine how hard that must have been in an era when it was illegal?
- Almina was a complex character whose life might have been quite different had she not been illegitimate. Yet she achieved a lot for a woman in that era. How did you feel about Almina in the novel?
- Eve led a very sheltered childhood, and as she said to Brograve when they met, she was still trying to find out what kind of person she was. Did you see her character change through the different time periods the novel covers? What characteristics did she retain even after her strokes?
- What’s your view about the issue of who owns artifacts found in foreign lands? Do you think Ana Mansour was justified in the methods she used to try to reclaim them?
- Do you believe spirits can contact us from the afterlife? Do you think the tomb might have been cursed?
- Brograve and Eve had very different personalities. Do you think he was the right husband for her?
- Have any of your loved ones experienced memory loss or personality changes after a head injury or stroke? Were you convinced by the way Eve recalled some events from the past and not others, and the moments of lucidity she sometimes experienced? Did this concur with your experiences?
- Have you watched Downton Abbey? Can you imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a stately home like Highclere Castle? How do you think it would affect you as an adult?
