CREATION

This was the first Gore Vidal book I read and certainly not the last. It is a marvellous and fascinating journey, specially for me, living in India. Vidal has the brilliance of making history come alive, making it memorable and meaningful.A must read for everyone, everywhere.

A fabulous read

The book is excellent but the copy the seller sent me is either very old or used.

This is not a review of the book but it's printing quality. The quality of both the paper and the cover was really cheap. It seemed like one of those fake versions you recieve on the road. Amazon must use its descretion to filter fake or cheap quality versions from the books it sells.

Fabulous adventure examining global relations in the age of Confucius, Zoroaster and Darius the Great. Tyranny is everywhere and exists today where multinational corporations refuse to allow workers to organise.

I read this 30 years ago and had such great memories I tried it again. The prose is elegant, the erudition remarkable and the lead character is wonderful. A pure reading pleasure.

A really enjoyable book

I re-read this book about once every two years, and I think I've gone through three copies. As historical novels go it avoids the present over-active sex and slaying model, and goes for the reasoned wanderer. Just as with the great Alfred Duggan (all of whose narrators sound like a slightly blasé English gentleman) the narrator of Creation (Cyrus Spitama) is a New England Yankee - he is Gore Vidal but on a really good day. The Greek Wars have been purloined for the purpose of comparison with the War of Terror. But Vidal goes back to the older world where British and American imperialists and scholars worshipped at the feet of Greece and Rome; he then suggests a good deal of the received view of the Greek Wars (and much else Persian) is wrong - in some cases anticipating future scholarship. The poem "The Persian Version" by Robert Graves predates Creation and shows the same refusal to accept the received view (as well as allowing a pop at Great War military reporting). Gore Vidal does not simply write a contrarian history; he has identified that in one lifetime a person could have met (or met at one remove) a list of great philosophers (Zoroaster, Socrates, the Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tsu, and Confucius) and historical characters (Perikles, Thucydides, Darius, Xerxes and many other Greek and Persian names). At times the novel is reportage, and others a travelogue, a commentary on various religions, and an arch tale of the life of a courtier.It is a wonderful piece of work; immerse yourself in it.

Vidal's Creation is a wonderful work of fiction "masquerading as history" to quote another reviewer. Literally a tour of the known world at height of Persian power, in page-turner prose. I read this after a recommendation from Charles Hill in his recent Grand Strategies (also excellent) and wanted to reacquaint myself with this period of history while taking a break from non-fiction. And while Creation is a work of fiction, throughout are life lessons; lessons in the fragility and frailty of human beings and their systems of governance and their competing philosophies. Highly recommended.