Features a poem in five books, of circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer, this book charts two currents of history: the visible history charted in events - the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement - and unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.

The definitive translation of the world's oldest known epic, now updated with newly discovered materialMiraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as far as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, predates Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties ...