Gilgamesh: A New English Version » (Reprint)

Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make ancient masterpieces thrillingly new, to step in where many have tried before and to create versions that are definitive for our time. His many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, The Book of Job, Bhagavad Gita, and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. His web site is www.stephenmitchellbooks.com.

The hero is 16 feet tall. He is the king of Uruk, in the Iraq of about 2750 BCE, and he is a despot, running afoul of even the gods. The man who is his soul mate, lover and spouse is Enkidu, who was once wild and naked but was tamed by the erotic ministrations of a temple priestess. When their preemptive strike on a monster of evil results in the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh's desperate mourning and search for a way to avoid a similar fate leads him to understand, at the end of the world, that the best way to find wisdom is not to look for it. Written 1000 years before the Iliad, this powerful epic was lost for nearly 2000 years until it was found on clay tablets in the ruins of Nineva. Mitchell's robust translation includes his notes on the text and its context, as well as a comprehensive glossary. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The New York Times - Joy Connolly

[Mitchell] believes literary greatness rests in what texts can teach us about ourselves, and he cracks open the lessons in ''Gilgamesh'' by rebuilding its clay fragments into a poem easy on the eyes and the transcultural imagination. Gone are the brackets and dots that signify the presence of gaps and disputed interpretations in the sources. When he can, Mitchell spackles the standard Akkadian version with verses in other languages, from other traditions; when none are available, he supplies his own. The result is a quintessentially American version of the ancient Mesopotamian narrative -- vibrant, earnest, unfussily accessible -- whose moments of red-blooded splendor stand in contrast to stretches of bland sentimentality.