"Book Sense Notable" Pick, April 2005


"...this is a beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and finely detailed novel...The Third Translation is well worth reading."

—Amazon.com


"Inventive... In Bondurant's ambitious debut, a sprawling picaresque is infused with mythic resonance... [THE THIRD TRANSLATION] is a prose poem to London's squalid demimonde."

—Publisher's Weekly


"First-time novelist Bondurant became fascinated by the Stela of Paser while working at the British Museum. His extensive research has paid off in a literary page-turner whose characters are as compelling and complex as the Stela itself."

—Booklist


"A compelling amalgam of history, mysticism and suspense, The Third Translation is tantalizing brain candy - highly recomended..."
—Bookpage


"The Third Translation is an absolutely wonderful specimen of a debut novel, one that combines gripping action and academia in a superbly erudite manner. Bondurant has found the fabled "third way" with a story that unites and engages both the pulse and the mind of the reader, engendering a new type of tale that is both brainy and breathless."
—Washington Examiner


"The Third Translation, is a literary work, driven by complex characters and a sense of humor drawn from the likes of such postmodern masters as Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon...it doesn't read like the latest Grisham. For one thing, Rothschild is a meticulously constructed character...There are plenty of absurdist touches, too: giant professional wrestlers... as well as a darkly funny tangent about a lost Canadian mission to the moon...a remarkable sequence of events that Bondurant renders like Jack London in a fever dream."
—Washington City Paper


"The Third Translation is a clever, twisty tale that involves a cult, pro wrestlers and researchers with dark secrets. Bondurant, who once worked at the British Museum, does well with pace and dialogue. His plot vibrates with enough of London today and Egypt way back to keep listeners hanging on." (audio book)
—St. Paul Pioneer Press/ The Palm Beach Post


"Matt Bondurant's THE THIRD TRANSLATION cross-pollinates Egyptologists with professional wrestlers, thieves with novelists, hydroelectric engineering with space-program conspiracies. It pits the solvable mysteries of crime against the theoretically solvable mysteries of lost civilizations and unsolvable mysteries of lost wives and estranged daughters. In chronicling a week in the broken life of a cautious intellectual yanked into the hugger-mugger of the London night, this literary page-turner doesn't so much blur the distinction between fictional genres as render them useless. I understand that it's unlikely Bondurant is the bighearted bastard child of A.S. Byatt and Jonathan Lethem, unlikelier still Saul Bellow and Zadie Smith, but anyone reading this brainy, engaging debut novel will be forgiven for their suspicions."

—Mark Winegardner, author of That's True of Everybody, Crooked River Burning, and the forthcoming The Godfather Returns.


"How rare to encounter a young writer whose first steps press so deep and leave, I'll bet, lasting footprints on the literary landscape. In the past twenty years I can recall exactly a handful whose debut novels so dazzled me with their arcane intelligence and cosmic conspiracies, their dark artful blendings of sophistication and vulgarity—Richard Powers and his THREE FARMERS, David Foster Wallace's BROOM, Bruce Duffy's tour de force on Wittgenstein, Donna Tartt and her SECRET HISTORY, Jonathan Safran Foer. Make it a neat half-dozen: Matt Bondurant and his extraordinary THE THIRD TRANSLATION."

—Bob Shacochis, National Book Award Winning Author of Easy In The Islands, Swimming In The Volcano, and the non-fiction book The Immaculate Invasion.


"THE THIRD TRANSLATION has the complex twists of the passageways of an ancient tomb, but Matt Bondurant knows the path through and he leads us to a deep chamber of treasure. This novel provides a thrilling reading experience and it marks the beginning of a brilliant new literary career. Bondurant is the real thing."

—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain and Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards.


"Matt Bondurant has written the kind of novel I'm always dying to read. THE THIRD TRANSLATION is funny, suspenseful and smart, and its characters are complex and unique...This novel is a treat from beginning to end."

—Elizabeth Stuckey-French, author of Mermaids on the Moon and The First Paper Girl in Red Oak Iowa


"Through otherworldly prose and oracular voice, Bondurant excavates the ancient world beneath the modern and translates the oldest story into hip London-speak. Like an archeologist who stands before a dark pyramid and perceives the glowing tomb within, Bondurant somehow knows the secret yearnings all humans harbor, and these he coaxes golden and fabulous onto the page. THE THIRD TRANSLATION has the mystery, power and beauty of an ancient hieroglyph, and this novel is sure to last as long."

—Adam Johnson, author of Emporium and Parasites Like Us