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Gilgamesh by Joan London (2004, Trade Paperback) Armenia & Soviet Armenian Story - Picture 1 of 1
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Gilgamesh by Joan London (2004, Trade Paperback) Armenia & Soviet Armenian Story

loridzor
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US $3.00
ApproximatelyAU $4.63
Condition:
Like new
Breathe easy. Returns accepted.
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Located in: Providence, Rhode Island, United States
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eBay item number:203153147716
Last updated on 23 Aug, 2024 23:26:44 AESTView all revisionsView all revisions

Item specifics

Condition
Like new: A book that looks new but has been read. Cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket ...
Country/Region of Manufacture
Armenia
ISBN
9780802141217

About this product

Product Identifiers

Publisher
GROVE/Atlantic, Incorporated
ISBN-10
0802141218
ISBN-13
9780802141217
eBay Product ID (ePID)
30243555

Product Key Features

Book Title
Gilgamesh
Number of Pages
272 Pages
Language
English
Publication Year
2004
Topic
Sagas, Family Life, Literary, Historical
Genre
Fiction
Author
Joan London
Format
Trade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height
0.7 in
Item Weight
8.5 Oz
Item Length
8.2 in
Item Width
5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended Audience
Trade
Dewey Edition
21
Dewey Decimal
823.3
Synopsis
This is a magnificent book, a story of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance. It is full of sparely depicted but fully fleshed characters and the wide sweep of history. It is 1937. On a tiny farm in the town of Nunderup, in far southwestern Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her sister Frances and their mother, a beautiful woman who lives mostly in her own mind after the sudden death of Frances and Edith's father. One afternoon two men, Edith's cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive-taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq. Among the tales they tell is the story of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh's great journey of mourning after the death of his friend Enkidu, and his search for the secret of eternal life, is to resonate throughout Edith's life, opening up the possibility of a life beyond the hardscrabble farm life of her village. When they leave, Leopold to return to London and Aram to Armenia, the house feels suddenly empty and Edith misses them fervently. Two years later, in 1939, Edith sets out on a journey of her own, bringing with her the young son she and Aram conceived, whom he does not know about. Motherhood has clarified Edith-she has become single-minded, unwilling to swerve from her path, no matter what social mores or practical limitations are put in her way. When she is sent to a birthing house to bear Jim, and believes they plan to adopt him out against her will, she sneaks out at dawn and takes him home. She raises him alone, under her sister's disapproving eye and despite the patronizing of Madge Tehoe, her employer at the Sea House hotel. When Madge's brother-in-law Ronnie comes to visit, he tells Edith how easy he has found it to make a life traveling around the world. She finds out how much she'd need to get started, and begins hoarding tips and quietly stealing small sums and useful objects from guests and the hotel. Edith believes that if she can get to Armenia, she and Aram will find each other. She catches a ship to London, where she gets to know Irina, Leopold's mother. Leopold himself is off at another dig. Irina tries to dissuade her from going to Armenia, but soon Edith boards the Orient Express in Paris for Armenia. On board, she and Jim are curiosities-a single woman and a toddler, traveling alone. A wealthy old man known only, famously, as Mr. Five Percent (for the five percent share he has in various aspects of Armenia's international trade), attempts to seduce her in his compartment, but she escapes and is befriended by Hagop, a textile trader who was made partially lame when his music school was bombed in a dispute between Armenian nationalists and the secret police. Hagop elects himself as Edith's traveling companion, negotiating her into Armenia despite her lack of a visa, and finding her transport and a place to stay in Yerevan, the capital. She moves into the apartment of a famous Armenian poet, an old blind woman known only as Tati, and becomes her caretaker. Hagop and his wife Nevart, a beautiful, caustic pianist embittered by the ending of her career and being put in a wheelchair by the same explosion in which Hagop was injured. Edith remains in Yerevan, enrolling Jim in school, working herself hard caring for Nevart and Tati, enjoying Hagop's companionship, and once sleeping with a nightclub owner named Manouk. Her responsibilities are eased when Nevart begins singing and playing piano at a hotel nightclub for an audience of Russian soldiers, and eventually moves into the hotel full-time. But in January 1943, things start to become more dangerous-Germany and Russia are locked in combat, and Yerevan is increasingly tense with informers and surveillance. In the first months of 1944 Nevart kills herself, and simultaneously Hagop informs Edith and Jim they must leave, that they are no longer protected from the secret police. He picks them up on the street th, Gilgamesh is a rich, spare, and evocative novel of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance, a debut that marks the emergence of a world-class talent. It is 1937, and the modern world is waiting to erupt. On a farm in rural Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her mother and her sister, Frances. One afternoon two men, her English cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive-taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq-to captivate Edith with tales of a world far beyond the narrow horizon of her small town of Nunderup. One such story is the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian king who traveled the world in search of eternal life. Two years later, in 1939, Edith and her young son, Jim, set off on their own journey, to Soviet Armenia, where they are trapped by the outbreak of war. Rich, spare, and evocative, Gilgamesh won The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award alongside Richard Flanagan's

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loridzor

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