I recall once that Gore Vidal included this title on a list he provided some interviewer (one supposes, given the vagaries of memory) of Books Which Everyone Ought To Read. And don't quibble with me about who is and who is not included in "everyone" because, well, either it includes everyone or it's slightly hyperbolic. Nor please to quibble about the "ought" because I have really no patience nor tolerance for those who say there is only an is and never an ought, even if patience and tolerance are virtues one ought to bring with one into any exchange of views, opinions, knowledges, and things of this nature. Which is basically why Vidal is correct in including his own book on a list of Books Which Everyone Ought To Read.

Some books feel as if they were written for you. This is an illusion, of course, and a vain one at that. But, alas, this book feels so written for me that I am obliged to declare my vanity aloud.

I know I'm almost guaranteed to like this book by its premise alone. Still it exceeded my expectations with its masterful blend of history, political intrigue, dark humor, and of course - ancient philosophies, with all their transient founders and timeless melancholy.

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Creation has always been, in Vidal's own words, meant as "a crash course in comparative religion." Our narrator ends up sitting down with most of the major philosophers of the time and discussing the meaning of life and all other good stuff with them. Vidal seems quite earnest about the fact that the whole plot is just a device to get these men talking.

And I'm totally on board with it. For me, the Axial Age is one of the most fascinating periods in human history. From Greece, Persia, India, and China, most of humanity's fundamental religions and political ideas sprang from these few hundred years. Subtly or overtly, these thoughts have shaped much of the world to this day, and will probably continue to do so.

I've been begging for some brave novelist to try to capture the sheer weight of this period in historical fiction, but at the same time, I am certain that fear that this Herculean effort will fail. Either it will become a philosophical encyclopedia or a Hollywood action blockbuster movien   300: The Sequeln, in which Greece once again triumphs over Persia. Either it will be a transparent means of converting readers to a particular school of thought, or a cautious work so self-conscious that it gives up on touching comparative philosophy at all. Either too focused on plot or too focused on character. Too fast or too slow. Too ... you get the idea.

Then along came Gore Vidal. He poured into Creation his mastery of the writing craft, his genuine love of philosophy, his exhaustive research into the classical world - and his undoubtedly painful reflections on his own declining years and eventual legacy after all dust has settled. Vidal was fifty-six when this novel was first published; seventy-seven when he oversaw the printing of the second edition with four deleted chapters restored.

This is a book of tangled, warring emotions. Perhaps nothing embodies them more than our narrator, our "I."

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Cyrus Spitama, the fictional grandson of Zoroaster - Vidal's choice of protagonist begins for me as a bizarre choice made after smoking pot and ends as a stroke of genius. Cyrus is a delightful narrator - snarky, compassionate, dogmatic, open-minded, with contradictions in every particle of his character.

Cyrus seems to be a devout Zoroastrian, but as Democritus suspects, perhaps even Cyrus himself cannot say how much he believes in his grandfather - how much the mask he has been forced to wear all his life has become part of his face. He appears to be a vehement defender of the Achaemenid Empire, but he has expressed no little contempt for the "Aryan" blood of the royal family and no little pride in his own supposed Chaldean origins. He seems to believe that Greece is but a speck of dust to the Empire and that Persia's future lies to the east, yet he calls Ionian Greek the most beautiful language and, in the end, it is to a Greek that he recounts the story of his life.

Vidal has brilliantly chosen to turn our course teacher into a complicated, human character. At times, one gets the feeling that this story is really about Cyrus - in his seventy-fifth year, blind and brittle, looking back on the bumpy road that has brought him here, and looking forward with bittersweet wonder to the nothingness beyond his own dim twilight; complaining about the Greeks, but also unable to stop himself from rambling on to the cheerful, curious Greek youth sitting opposite him, urging him to tell more.

Cyrus' paradoxical centrality is played into the narrative itself. In terms of the plot, Cyrus' life at the Persian court sometimes seems more important than the philosophical debates. Because for Cyrus, his survival at court and his care for Xerxes do take precedence, however much he may want to indulge himself in his intellectual quest for cosmic truth.

In a book about people long dead, this touch of humanity creates an emotional impact that's much more effective.

I did not expect to be so moved by the non-philosopher characters of Darius, Xerxes, and Atossa. Moved is perhaps the wrong feeling. It is a melancholy that accompanies the witnessing of the deaths of great men who defined much of their age - and the closing of the curtains on the age that defined them. The book's ending serves as a beautiful conclusion to its theme:

The story begins as the midday sun of the Persian Empire starts to set and the blazing star of Athens is just rising; the story ends as the last flames of Athens have guttered out and the Spartans march in victorious as the only hegemon left standing. As this happens, somewhere far away, the next conqueror is stirring impatiently in the wings, getting his make-up on, and ready to burst upon the stage of history.

At this point, none of the states that directly gave birth to Anaxagoras, Socrates, Gosala, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius are what they were - mostly dead or half-dead. And yet, somewhere in occupied Athens, wondering about the stories he had heard from Cyrus, the now-elderly Democritus ends this memory by proposing his own answer to the question of creation - the atomic theory of the universe. Empires rise and fall, but ideas and civilizations endure.

As I said, when it comes down to it, this story is as much about Cyrus himself - and all the people he once met - as it is about a crash course in ancient philosophy. And as I said, this is a really clever choice.

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Now, we can move on to the philosophy part itself.

One reviewer has described this novel as "patrician name-dropping," and he's not wrong. Almost every character, whether mentioned in passing or appearing on screen, is an actual historical figure, (I would guess) mostly from Herodotus' Histories.

I'm interested in this period, so I looked up the names I didn't know - which, frankly, was a lot - and learned much about the ancient world from the 6th to the 5th century BCE. However, I can imagine that those less interested might find the name-dropping frustrating.

I'd say it's helpful, if not necessary, to have some knowledge of classical Greek history (and the "traditional" Greek view of the Greco-Persian Wars) to appreciate Cyrus' snark and the book's many, many easter eggs - some hilarious, some truly poignant.

That said, the "patrician" style of the book extends beyond the names. I have read some of the works of the ancient philosophers featured, and Vidal often takes direct quotes or scenes from these primary sources. Fortunately for the reader, our spunky Cyrus often fires back at the master or sage with whom he has a showdown, keeping the (already seen) debates interesting enough - and the plot with enough conflict - for me to feel invested.

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On the subject of debates: Cyrus is, perhaps surprisingly, very critical of nihilistic Buddhism, while deeply admiring of worldly Confucianism. It's another testament to Vidal's writing skills that I'm relatively unconcerned about this; I'm usually very sensitive to any author's attempt to subtly or overtly promote their own religio-political position.

Certainly, Cyrus' views reflect at least some of Vidal's own; but thankfully, because Cyrus is a character sufficiently established - and sufficiently unreliable, as Democritus' frequent questioning of Cyrus' version of the story shows - the reader can choose to interpret Cyrus' views in the light of his character, rather than the author's sneaky intentions.

After so long trying to play the role of the "true" successor to the Zoroastrian prophet, Cyrus finds himself deeply attached to one of the most secular schools of thought of his time. In the end, this is the same man who dreams of becoming the satrap of India and has struck up a lifelong friendship with Xerxes and Mardonius, two ambitious heathens with no interest whatsoever in spreading the Truth of the Wise Lord. Cyrus' identification with Confucianism fits in well with his character, full as it is of contradictions that have always been present in him.

The same is true of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, or at least the version presented in this novel, will easily (and perhaps deliberately) remind Western readers of Christianity, with all its monotheism, its Manichaean worldview, its quest to convert all devil-worshippers to the "true religion," and so on.

Given what we know of Vidal's political leanings, we shouldn't be surprised that Zoroastrianism doesn't come out on top in this 500-page philosophical debate. But once again, Vidal delivers his verdict with grace and perhaps respect: He puts the rejection of the Wise Lord into the mouth of Democritus, who is in the process of developing his own theory - making this rejection appear in character and therefore open to different interpretations by the reader.

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This is a book that aims to be a course in ancient philosophy; this is a book in which the author has his opinions to say; but it also has colorful characters that can absorb, integrate, and reinforce these two aims, to the satisfaction of both the author and the reader. In short, this book never forgets that it is first and foremost a novel designed to entertain. And entertained I was.

As Master Li would have said, the Tao is all about the harmony between heaven and earth. As I would have said, historical fiction is all about the harmony between history and a good story. I may never know if the Tao exists, but I do know that Creation is a good historical novel reads as if written specifically for me.

I really don’t like it when I feel like a book is trying to teach me something. Sorry, I should rephrase that, I hate it when an author uses their craft to step up on a soap box and tell me that I am wrong or the way I think is not “correct”. In Creation, Gore Vidal covers some deep topics: from how the world was created, to what is right or wrong, just or unjust, what happens to us when we die and what is the purpose or meaning of life. And he did all of this without shoving anything down my throat, and Lord knows, that this subject matter could have allowed for this.

I listened to the Audible version of Creation and I have to say that Malcolm Hillgartner performed impeccably. The narrator, Cyrus Spitama, was a hardened curmudgeon, they make some of the best narrators, Hillgartner owned that role and his delivery was not only perfect to the character but captivated me from the opening scenes until the very end, all twenty-seven hours.

While I am well aware that you cannot count on a fiction book to always deliver historical facts, Vidal gave me the distinct impression that he did his homework. I came out of Creation feeling like I had learned a great deal about fifth century B.C. Persia, India and China, how these civilizations existed during this period and how small the world was way back then. We always think that global travel is a new thing, that ancient peoples were stuck or trapped in their little corners of the world, but I often come back to what one of my history professors said that ancient cultures had that no longer exists - patience. If it took twelve years to go to China and back, well it took twelve years, and everyone was okay with that.

An aspect of Creation that I adored was the point of view that Vidal brought to this time and place. Usually we see it only from the Athenian / Western point of view. It was brilliant how Vidal looked at everything from the Persian side. His mockery of our beloved democracy, his treatment of the great western thinkers to how Greece was so insignificant to the Persians. It wasn’t that the Greeks beat off the Persians, it just wasn’t worth the trouble.

This was my first odyssey into Vidal’s works, and it has given me the taste for more. From his irreverence to all of our western ideals to his respect to his audience to form their own opinion to his creation of incredible characters and bringing to life historical icons, this book was definitely an intriguing treat.

I fail to remember the last time I read such an intense, difficult and informative book. The only book which surpasses this one in sheer mass and complexity is War and Peace. In terms of the tremendous amount of information embedded in this historical fiction, there is none other I can think of. Gore Vidal contends that 5th century BC was one of the most creative periods of human existence. 5th century BC, the age which saw huge strides in creation and expansion of ancient civilizations, a time of Buddha, Mahavira, Xerves, Darius, Artaxerves, Socrates, Confucius, Pythogaros, Democedes and so many more. This was a period of giant strides in the fields of mathematics, philosophy and most importantly religion.
Gore Vidal's narrator, indeed Gore Vidal himself, is Cyrus Spitama, the grandson of Zoraster who is asked to go on a series of embassies for Darius and Xerves, the great Persian emperors of that age. In course of his travels, he journeys across large parts of India, Cathay and lands up blind and old in Greece. It is in his final embassy at Athens that he recounts all his travels to his nephew, Democretus.
Creation is a fantastic book. Historical fiction is notorious for being precisely that, fiction. It is easy to distort facts and interweave them to suit the story and many authors have been notorious for doing that. However, Gore Vidal does his homework peerlessly. Brick by brick, he builds the milieu of distant lands in even more distant times with such intricacy that soon one can smell the filthy rivers of India, feel the coolness of the Cathayan forests and walk along the city of Babylon. He constructs the social, legal, economic, religious systems of that era and most importantly he constructs the courts of those times. From the eunuchs of the persian courts to elephant politics of Indian courts, from the non-existent Emperor of middle kingdom to Ajatshatru, the vicious monarch of Magadha, one feels astounded by the scale and complexity of this book. Gore Vidal writes uncompromisingly. I had to go back many times to pick up the thread of a conversation due to the enormous numbers of characters involved in it. Managing all of them and logically placing them over a period of a few hundred years of time that this book covers is an extremely difficult job. And this remains Gore Vidal's singular achievement. Lastly, one senses that the purpose of the book was something higher than just a simple exposition on humanity in those perilous times. There is an undercurrent of curiosity at what the different philosophies of that time made of the eternal question, How and why were we created? Somewhere along the way, Gore Vidal does not try to answer the question himself but walks along with the reader through the simulation of that time that he conjures and genuinely probes for a clue. It is as if the book ceases to be a book but a minor time machine. Each one of us could take our own journey and come up with our own answers.

Positiv überrascht! Das Buch ist angenehm zu lesen und sehr interessant. Persien, Indien und Cathay 500 v.Chr. , unbekannte Welten, die im Buch mit einer großen Genauigkeit beschrieben sind und für den Leser ein unvergessliches imaginäres Abenteuer bieten.

This book has a very interesting premise, but I feel it did not follow through, getting bogged down in boring details. Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the famed Zoroaster, becomes and ambassador for first Darius then Xerxes of ancient Persia. He goes to India where he meets Buddha, then China where he meets Confucius. But the story is, alas, boring.

Cosa potete fare a uno che candidamente confessa "a me sarebbe sempre piaciuto leggere un libro storico con protagonisti Socrate, Buddha e Confucio, che sono più o meno contemporanei. Visto che non esisteva, l'ho scritto io"? Ecco, questo è Gore Vidal. In questo tomo, già che c'era, ha deciso che la voce narrante fosse Ciro Spitama, nientemeno che il nipote di Zoroastro, che racconta i suoi incontri al suo lontano parente... Democrito. Non si fa mancare nulla, insomma; anzi in questa nuova edizione è riuscito a fare riaggiungere qualche centinaio di pagine che il curatore gli aveva fatto togliere. Vidal ama questi grandi affreschi, dove può permettersi di raccontare la storia come la vede lui: ad esempio le guerre greco-persiane sono narrate da parte di questi ultimi. Ma il vero filo conduttore è la domanda "come è nato l'universo? chi o cosa l'ha creato?" con tutte le risposte dei vari saggi e filosofi del tempo, e forse lì nascoste anche quelle dei moderni.
Il libro si legge molto piacevolmente nonostante la mole; in un paio di punti Stefano Tummolini si è però perso nell'intrico dei personaggi, attribuendo la battuta a quello sbagliato. Capita anche ai migliori, anche se scrivere però "calcolare usando le figure" è triste.

Meh...this dragged for me a little bit in the middle to three-fourths-ish part, and occasionally at other parts. Then again, it was packed with lots of interesting observations about various Greeks, Persians, Indians, etc. from a few centuries B.C., so I wouldn't call it dull, it just could have used a more aggressive editor, at times. Said editor could have dealt with some of the awkward repetition. I was absolutely floored by Vidal's book Julian, but this one, though similar in its imagining of historical figures and its snark about empire/religion/modern conceptions of history, did not amaze me as much. Being in China, I was excited to get to the Cathay part and read the snark there. But overall, this story just did not ever really seem to get going; it seemed more like Vidal just weaving together everything he knew or wanted to say and stringing it together with Cyrus Spitama.

A detailed historical fiction account about a man who was Zoroaster’s grandson and was raised in the courts of Darius and Xerxes in ancient Persia. He travelled to India and Cathay (China) and met Confucius and the Buddha. Painstakingly detailed but worth it.

This is less a novel than a guided tour of ancient philosophy all held together through the tenuous threads of one (fictional) man’s life. Cyrus Spitama is a Persian in service to the king of kings of Persia, where he encounters many of the most famous men of the age. The fifth century BC was an amazing time in world history. In Greece you have Socrates, Anaxagoras, Democritus; in Persia there is Zoroaster (at least possibly, though I suspect he was much earlier); in India you have Mahavira, Gosala, the Buddha; in China there is Lao Tzu and Confucius. All of these men changed the course of their civilizations and it is incredible to think that they were contemporaries.

Unlike, say, Forrest Gump, these encounters are more than just cameos and impossible coincidences. Cyrus is a great lover of wisdom. He seeks out these men, which makes the coincidences feel much more plausible than if he’d just run into them in a pub. Cyrus’ obsession is the search for the answers of creation. Although a devout Zoroastrian (his grandfather was Zoroaster himself) he feels that something is missing in the greater truth. How did the universe begin? And so as ambassador to India and China he seeks out the wisest men around to answer this question.

The depiction of all these figures is supremely well handled. Intellectually, they are exactly where they should be, keeping in mind that it is impossible to state with certainty which elements of the existing accounts are accurate and which are later additions/interpretations. Hearing philosophies articulated by the people themselves is a delight. We hear the importance of the rejection of desire from the Buddha’s lips himself. Lao Tzu lectures Cyrus on Taoism and the virtue of nonaction. Confucius waxes rhapsodic on the importance of tradition. They all have personalities too. The Buddha is austere and single-minded to the point you kind of want to strangle him. Democritus is curious and more accepting of foreign wisdom than most Greeks, even if he feels the need to defend them. Confucius is a warm and ethical man who loves fishing. They all work.

Cyrus Spitama is a great narrator. By which I mean he isn’t perfect. We’re familiar enough with the nature of mankind to be suspicious about perfect narrators. It means they’re lying. It means inauthenticity. But Cyrus the narrator is a blind old man of 74, and like most old men he’s prone to rambling digressions and losing his train of thought. Reminds me of my grandfather actually. He’s always good for a story or two, but last time I was up there he told me the same story three times. It was all about driving at night and driving along the white line in the center of the road. He really shouldn’t be driving at night.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Cyrus’ digressions. As with most narrators of this sort the illusion isn’t perfect. It’s not trying to be. At 1,000 pages long it’s longer than all but the most universal of histories. And Cyrus is prone to reproducing entire conversations and everyday social matters in a way no ancient author would. Even a memoirist today couldn’t reproduce their life in as much detail and accuracy as this old man with no access to diaries or records. But this sort of inauthenticity is usually for the best in historical novels. You want the illusion of authenticity, not the reality of it. Too much reality and you end up with something like Pericles the Athenian or Memoirs of Hadrian.

Cyrus is also a tremendous grump. It’s a good thing I’ve a fondness for grumpy old men. More than a grump, he’s Gore Vidal. Bitter, cynical, caustic, and full of contempt for anyone who has the audacity to disagree with him. And he’s eminently quotable. Just a few examples:

Hereditary priests usually tend to atheism. They know too much.
Like Greeks, Indians are better at questions than at answers.
Nothing, he declared, would make him happier than to see the Cathay dragon rug in the house of his favorite daughter. But we never got the rug. This was the sort of happiness that he tended to deny himself.
The Buddhists accept the world as it is, and try to eliminate it.

This book is also a look at the Greco-Persian wars from a unique viewpoint. Cyrus, despite his Greek mother and the Greek grand-nephew he’s narrating to, is very much a loyal Persian. So to him, there’s very little noble about the Greeks taking on first Darius then Xerxes. The Greeks basically start the mess through their ceaseless feuding, and then they blow their actual achievements out of all proportion, all the while jockeying for the Great King’s favors. This also includes a wonderful account of life in the Persian court. Cyrus is a close childhood friend of Xerxes and Mardonius, so he’s in the perfect position to say what goes on behind closed doors and why. Possibly the most interesting element of this is how much focus is given to the women of the harem. As per this account, the empire is basically administered through the wives of the kings, since they stay in the palace and are close to the administrative offices and the eunuchs who serve the throne. Harem intrigues determine the course of empires. Queen Atossa (daughter of Cyrus the Great, wife of Darius) is a master at these and one of the book’s most engaging characters.

Here is where Cyrus’ few problems as a narrator come in. How reliable is he really? When in the East we seem to be expected to regard him as flawless. Is the same true in the West? Much as I agree with the idea that the punitive campaign would have been seen as accomplishing its main objective (they did manage to burn Athens to the ground after all) I struggle a little with the idea that the battles of Salamis and Plataea could be written off as inconsequential. Unlucky losses to an unworthy foe sure, but a substantial part of the Persian army was lost in Greece. Similarly, the dismissal of Greeks as poor soldiers (while nice in the face of the gross eurocentrism usually displayed) hardly seems fair. And (an admittedly young) Socrates as a mere “splitter of hairs”? Is Cyrus letting his contempt get in the way of his good sense here? If so, why doesn’t he in the East? He reproduces the beliefs of the Buddha faithfully, despite despising all that he stands for. Same goes for the political situation. It feels like there’s a bit of conflict between being true to the character and telling an accurate story.

The book’s big problem though, and for a book this ambitious of course there’s a problem, is that it tries to do too much. The book is split between two narratives: Cyrus seeking wisdom while traveling to foreign lands as an ambassador and Cyrus observing the Persian court and its growing involvement in Greek affairs. At first this split isn’t too bad. The first sage, Zoroaster, blends in easily enough since he is connected with the Persian kings and therefore Cyrus’ journey. But the whole Greco-Persian Wars from a Persian angle gets derailed once we travel to India. And then we’re back again for Xerxes’ rise only to head off for five years in China. And then we’re back to the culmination of the wars and the journey to a lonely exile in Athens. If you accept the wars as the main plot then visiting the sages is the sideline. If you see the sages as the main plot then the wars are the sideline. Worse still, Cyrus’ visits to the sages in no way affects his storyline in the Persian court, just as political events back in Persia have no relevance to his experience abroad. The stories simply aren’t connected to each other.

The book is flawed in conception (ironically) and tries to take on too much by giving equal focus to two unlike and unrelated narratives. Normally this large a structural issue would automatically rule out perfection (five stars), but I am floored by the book’s vision(s) and the depth of its world. This is a book that truly understands the ideas of which it speaks and is able to represent theologies and philosophies in scenarios that come from the author’s imagination rather than just reproducing their existing statements. It is also a book that seeks to understand a marginalized and oft-maligned culture by placing it at the center of events rather than viewing it as a pale reflection of nationalistic Greek sources. Ambition is the central requirement of great literature, but it must be supported with insight, wit, and thoughtfulness. This book has all that in droves. Highly recommended if you have the patience.

Perhaps, if I weren't also a writer of historical fiction, I'd cut Mr Vidal some slack. But the amount of infodumping here is just too much, and instead of a novel, we have what I go to great to lengths to avoid in my own writing: nonfiction. Vidal gave his protagonist an excuse for this up front for this (he's blind and is dictating his memoirs, and his amanuensis is always asking for more information). The first-person voice is that grumpy old crank, Gore Vidal, and he spends five hundred pages telling what he knows and thinks about the time period. A far cry from Julian and Burr.

Truly a tour-de-force, imaginative broad scope of story telling via a matrix of 5th-Century figures — from Xerxes & Cyrus of Persia, Socrates of Athens, Buddha of India, Lao Tzu & Confucius of China…. In the vein of Herodotus’ Histories.