Volume 28, Number 8 · May 14, 1981
The Wise Lord and the Lie
By Mary Renault
Creation
by Gore Vidal
Random House, 510 pp., $15.95
Supposing that Sinbad had been not merely a resourceful trader but a sophisticated Graeco-Persian of the mid-fifth century BC; an orthodox Zoroastrian, an expert diplomat with an insatiable curiosity about alien civilizations and, in particular, about the origins of the universe; a man whose career had taken him over and beyond most of the then known world. Scheherazade would scarcely have needed the rest of the Arabian Nights in order to keep a drowsy emperor awake past execution time for the necessary years. In fact, it is dangerous to dip anywhere into this surging river of a book; the difficulty of climbing out of the current, and starting properly at the beginning, increases with every page.
Review, 2226 words
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