Egypt, 1922: the Valley of the Kings. After years of fruitless labour, the archaeologist Howard Carter exposes a flight of stone steps. They lead him to the doorway of a mysterious tomb, sealed and marked with a terrible curse. 'Death,' Carter reads, 'shall come on swift wings, to whosoever toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh'. But what is the nature of the tomb's deadly secret? And what is the web of strange connections which reaches millennia, to the very heart of Egypt's fabulous past? In THE SLEEPER IN THE SANDS, Tom Holland brings his unique storytelling powers and impeccable research to the most mesmerising of all Egypt's stories. Howard Carter reveals the truth behind his thirty-year-old quest for the buried Tut-ankh-Amen. In medieval Cairo, a psychotic caliph orders an unwilling sage to discover the key to immortality. And in Ancient Thebes, Akh-en-Aten, most enigmatic and tragic of the Pharaohs, seeks to purge his realm of a terrible darkness, and gain salvation in the arms of the beautiful Nefertiti.