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The element -inth in Greek

Research content/process:

Set in modern Crete, the novel combines the genre of detective fiction with the first biography of neglected American linguist Alice E. Kober, who before her premature death laid the foundations for deciphering the ancient Cretan script, Linear B. Funded by an AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts (2003 – 2006), Fell undertook extensive research into Bronze Age archaeology and epigraphy in the Heraklion Museum and sites on Crete, the PASP archive of Aegean scripts (University of Texas at Austin), and the Sir John Myers archive at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She consulted Kober’s correspondence held by the University of Pennsylvania and the Guggenheim Foundation. With Dr Sanna Aro-Valjus (Abo University, Finland), she read Kober’s correspondence with Finnish epigrapher Johannes Sundwall. She undertook genealogical research at municipal archives in New York City.

Fell’s own research papers are deposited in the PASP archive, and early drafts of the novel at the National Library of Scotland, Contemporary Writers Archive. Fell’s novel and primary research were used by Margalit Fox for her biography of Kober, The Riddle of the Labyrinth (2013).

Fell originally intended to write the Kober sections as if they were autobiography, but since Kober left no traces of a personal life, Fell decided to write a fictional biography, ‘authored’ by Ingrid, the researcher in the novel. This allows Fell to intertwine Ingrid’s life with that of Kober.

She developed the novel as interplay between three investigations – Yiannis the policeman, deciphering a death, Ingrid deciphering a life, and Kober deciphering a script. Fell’s research into the earlier (as yet undeciphered) script of Linear A informed the theme of prehistoric ritual practices in the death of the character Ivo Kruja. Structured in parallels, the book contrasts logical versus analogical thought, and scientific with poetic investigation.