- Hardcover: 510 pages
- Publisher: Random House USA Inc; First Edition edition (1 Jan 1981)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0394500156
- ISBN-13: 978-0394500157
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 4.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 234,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
Our greatest living historical novelist. (ANTHONY BURGESS )
An historical novel of awesome scope and scholarship. (OBSERVER )
Highly absorbing, rich in history, irony and erudition. (GUARDIAN )
Splendid, serene, magisterial. (SUNDAY TIMES ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
An historical novel of awesome scope and scholarship. (OBSERVER )
Highly absorbing, rich in history, irony and erudition. (GUARDIAN )
Splendid, serene, magisterial. (SUNDAY TIMES ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
A sweeping novel of politics, war, philosophy, and adventure–in a restored edition, featuring never-before-published material from Gore Vidal’s original manuscript–Creation offers a captivating grand tour of the ancient world.
Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius. Now blind and aged in Athens–the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates–Cyrus recounts his days as he strives to resolve the fundamental questions that have guided his life’s journeys: how the universe was created, and why evil was created with good. In revisiting the fifth century b.c.–one of the most spectacular periods in history–Gore Vidal illuminates the ideas that have shaped civilizations for millennia.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius. Now blind and aged in Athens–the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates–Cyrus recounts his days as he strives to resolve the fundamental questions that have guided his life’s journeys: how the universe was created, and why evil was created with good. In revisiting the fifth century b.c.–one of the most spectacular periods in history–Gore Vidal illuminates the ideas that have shaped civilizations for millennia.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Vidal demonstrates an uncanny ability to grasp the finer details of ancient cultures and bring them to life. I come to this conclusion because of my own familiarity with one of the philosophical sytems and cultures covered - and here he achieves an extraordinary versimilitude with regard to the day to day life of the teacher and his followers, and the political intrigues surrounding the ruling aristocracy. A wonderful book with a strong narrative thread and for much of the time with the authors tongue firmly in cheek.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This marvellous novel pick us to the beginnings of the Occidental Culture guided by Cyro Spitama, a supposed descendant of Zoroastro, the persian prophet. With him we visit the ancient Greece of the V century b.C. ( the Presocratic Greece), The magic India ( Budha, Janin) and the misterious China ( Lao tse, Confucius ). In his long life, Cyro will know all the inportant evens of this decisive century: the century in which the greatest empires were built.
Leonardo Benito de Valle y Bermejo
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Vidal's best, by far
Having read it many years ago, I bought this book as a gift fora friend in the hospital... Just for fun, I opened it up to peruse it a bit. Read more
Published 11 months ago by rob crawford
.....or Corruption?
The problem with Gore Vidal and his 'historical' novels is that you can be sun dazzled by his erudition whilst failing to recognise what he said himself about his historical novels... Read more
Published 23 months ago by K. N. Tole
creation by Gore Vidal
a very engrousing book.But only to be read for pleasure, of which, I should think it was only intended for,as it's pure fiction with a few facts thrown in for good measure. Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2009 by bnhp75
What a clever man
What a clever, funny, sympathetic man Vidal thinks himself to be. There are a number of nice touches, such as the contempt all the really old civilisations feel for Athens, then at... Read more
Published on 30 July 2009 by Edward Rogers
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... Read more
Published on 18 July 2004 by L. C. Jones
Very very impressive
This is one of those books you will push your children to read
Published on 4 July 2004 by Gerard Pothuis
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