num_pages: 256
description: "Edith and Frances, living with their mother on a tiny farm in the south-west of Australia, are visited by their cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram. The two young men are taking the long way home after working on an archeological dig in Iraq. It is 1937. The modern world, they say, is waiting to erupt. Among the tales they tell is the story of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilamesh's great journey of mourning after the death of his friend Enkidu, and his search for the secret of eternal life, is to resonate through all of their lives. In 1939 Edith and her young child set off on an impossible journey of their own, to find themselves trapped by the outbreak of war. The story of this journey is the story of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss aqnd acceptance. Moving between rural Australia, London, the Caucasus and the Middle East, from the last days of the First World War to the years following the Second, Joan London's stunning novel examines what happens when we strike out into the worlld, and how, like Gagamesh, we find our way home." (from back cover of Picador book)
language: English
title: Gilgamesh
titlecomplete: Gilgamesh
genres: Australia, Historical, World War II, Adult Fiction, 21st Century, Novels, Family, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 1765
places: Australia
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Miles Franklin Literary Award, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Picador