Pompeii

Robert Harris's Pompeii, published by Random House in 2003, is built around the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which destroyed Pompeii and the towns around it. Marcus Attilius Primus comes from Rome to the Bay of Naples as the new aquarius, the hydraulic engineer responsible for the Aqua Augusta, the line that carries water to nine towns of the region, from Pompeii and Nola through Acerra, Atella and Napoli to Puteoli, Cumae, Baiae and Miseno. He finds the springs that feed the line beginning to fail, which has reduced the water reaching the region's reservoir, and he finds that the man he replaced, Exomnius, has disappeared without explanation.

Attilius is unpopular with the workers who answer to him, particularly with Corax, and his work along the line from Pompeii towards Misenum brings him into the affairs of the towns and the people it serves, among them a wealthy former slave and the officials with their own arrangements about the water. The novel is closely tied to the practical detail of Roman aqueducts and to the Roman calendar, and it places its fictional engineer in the days immediately before the eruption that overwhelmed the town.

A film adaptation of Pompeii was planned in 2007, to have been directed by Roman Polanski, but the production was cancelled.