A beguiling new reimagining of one of the most ancient and mysterious origin myths of human
civilization'The Flood didn't come suddenly as a big surprise. It came at the end of a long
tormented story. Men just went on multiplying and the noise they made was ever more irksome . .
. I remember days of desperation.'A long time ago the gods grew tired of humans and decided to
send a flood to destroy them. But Ea the god of fresh underground water didn't agree. He
advised one of his devotees Utnapishtim to build a quadrangular boat to house humans and
animals and saved these living creatures from the Flood.Rather than punish Utnapishtim for his
disobedience Enlil King of the gods granted the mortal eternal life and banished him to the
island of Dilmun. Thousands of years later when Sinbad the Sailor is shipwrecked and arrives
on that very same island the two begin a conversation about courage loss salvation and
sacrifice.Following Calasso's masterful retelling of ancient Greek myths in The Marriage of
Cadmus and Harmony and Indic myths in Ka this richly imaginative work delves into the crucible
of our collective consciousness to reimagine the origin stories of one of the earliest human
civilizations.
