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Books

A cold archaeological gaze: In the Garden of the Fugitives, by Ceridwen Dovey, reviewed

28 July 2018

9:00 AM

28 July 2018

9:00 AM

Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the gift shop: an excavated garden with 13 bodies twisting in an agonising tableau of pain, caught at the instant of their death. They are frozen in history and separated from the onlooker by a glass wall and museum labels — a human moment presented with the cold distance of an archaeological exhibit.

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