A Novel.
'There were two of them, two young men, dressed alike in narrow-brimmed black hats and black coats, longer and blacker than those Australians wore.'
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 archaeological 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. Gilgamesh's great journey of mourning, and his search for the secret of eternal life, is to resonate through all of their lives.
Two years later, Edith and her young child set off on an impossible journey of their own, to London, the Caucasus and the Middle East, 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 and acceptance . . . and, finally, returning home.
Joan London's superb story-telling and spare, compelling prose distil time and place in a novel that carves its mark deep into the mind.
