Gilgamesh Retold (Carcanet Classics)

by JennyLewis (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2018

  $13.74

  Jenny Lewis has produced a versatile and inventive retelling of Gilgamesh which brings alive a story that is as resonant today as it was when first composed in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) four millennia ago. In 2012 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship to study cuneiform and she has worked with the British Museum, the Ashmolean Musem, Oxford, and Pegasus Theatre, on seminars and performances. Her approach relocates Gilgamesh to its earlier, oral roots in a Sumerian society where men and women were more equal, the reigning deity was female (Inanna), only women were allowed to brew beer and keep taverns and women had their own language - emesal. With this shift of emphasis, Lewis captures the powerful allure of the world's oldest poem and gives it a fresh dynamic while creating a fast-paced narrative for a new generation of readers, students and scholars. She is the first practicing woman poet to produce a full poetic translation.