Gilgamesh Joan London by Joan London 9780330363471, 0330363476 instant download after payment.

Gilgamesh is a rich, spare, and evocative novel of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance, a debut that marked the emergence of a world-class talent. “A remarkable study of a young woman’s most literal rite of passage” (Baltimore Sun). 

It is 1937, and the modern world is waiting to erupt. On a farm in rural Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her mother and her sister, Frances. One afternoon two men, her English cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive - taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq — to captivate Edith with tales of a world far beyond the narrow horizon of her small town of Nunderup.  One such story is the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian king who travelled the world in search of eternal life. 

"Rich, spare, and evocative, Gilgamesh won The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. “Bold and beautiful... [An] astonishing saga... A woman as epic hero? It’s high time.”  -  Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine

Two years later, in 1939, Edith and her young son, Jim, set off on their own journey, to Soviet Armenia, where they are trapped by the outbreak of war. 

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 world, and how, like Gagamesh, we find our way home.