Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116997 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-23
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Synopsis
Vidal's historical novel set in the 5th century BC and narrated by Cyrus Spitama, son of a Persian prince and Greek sorceress, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, and ambassador to the courts of India, China and Greece. Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles and Confucius are among the book's characters.

Customer Reviews

Absorbing, rich and erudite
Creation takes the reader to a singular time in human history, when the Persian Empire of the Great Kings, the Indian kingdoms of the Ganges, Confucian China and Periclean Athens were simultaneously at their peak. Through the eyes of one man, a half-Persian, half-Greek, who travels for many years through these varied and brilliant empires, we experience worlds we have lost. He himself is the grandson of the Prophet Zoroastrus, and aide to the Great King Darius, and as Persia's roving ambassador, encounters legendary Greek figures, three generations of Persian kings, marries into the Indian royal house soon to conquer the Gangetic plains, meets the Buddha and encounters Confucius. This vast and ambitious work is simultaneously a fictional autobiography, an exploration of a sublime and fascinating era and its civilisations, and a story of one man's ceaseless inquiry into the nature of existence, truth and human origins. The title of the book is the focus of this ceaseless quest, and through this sweeping, exciting novel, the reader will find himself educated - without realising it - on the differing views of civilisations whose existence has ended, but whose ideas have lived on. Gore Vidal's painstaking research grants him absolute mastery over his subject matter, and his skill as a writer make this a splendid, majesterial and moving work of fact-fiction.

Absorbing, rich and erudite
Creation takes the reader to a singular time in human history, when the Persian Empire of the Great Kings, the Indian kingdoms of the Ganges, Confucian China and Periclean Athens were simultaneously at their peak. Through the eyes of one man, a half-Persian, half-Greek, who travels for many years through these varied and brilliant empires, we experience worlds we have lost. He himself is the grandson of the Prophet Zoroastrus, and aide to the Great King Darius, and as Persia's roving ambassador, encounters legendary Greek figures, three generations of Persian kings, marries into the Indian royal house soon to conquer the Gangetic plains, meets the Buddha and encounters Confucius. This vast and ambitious work is simultaneously a fictional autobiography, an exploration of a sublime and fascinating era and its civilisations, and a story of one man's ceaseless inquiry into the nature of existence, truth and human origins. The title of the book is the focus of this ceaseless quest, and through this sweeping, exciting novel, the reader will find himself educated - without realising it - on the differing views of civilisations whose existence has ended, but whose ideas have lived on. Gore Vidal's painstaking research grants him absolute mastery over his subject matter, and his skill as a writer make this a splendid, majesterial and moving work of fact-fiction.

Very very impressive
This is one of those books you will push your children to read