Creación

Ciro Espitama, viejo y ciego, dicta sus memorias a su sobrino el joven filósofo Demócrito, para rebatir la visión que de las guerras entre griegos y persas tiene Herodoto. Nieto de Zoroastro, le fue trasnmitida la sabiduría de su abuelo; como embajador del rey Darío en la India y Catay, conoce tanto las filosofías orientales como las intrigas políticas que el gran imperio persa mantiene para afianzarse o conquistar nuevos pueblos. En el siglo V a.C., Oriente y Occidente dirimen su futuro en Maratón, Salamina o Termópilas; mientras, en Asia, se extienden las religiones de Buda y Confucio y, en Atenas, Sócrates y sus discípulos se preguntan por el origen del universo.

In 445 BCE, Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, is the Persian ambassador to the city of Athens. He has a rather caustic appreciation of his situation: "I am blind. But I am not deaf. Because of the incompleteness of my misfortune, I was obliged yesterday to listen for nearly six hours to a self-styled historian whose account of what the Athenians like to call 'the Persian Wars' was nonsense of a sort that were I less old more privileged, I would have risen to my seat at the Odeon scandalized all Athens by answering him." Having thus dismissed Herodotus, Cyrus then dictates his life story to his nephew, Democritus, with similar disdain for the Greeks--whom we in the modern world have come to view as the progenitors of civilization, but whom Cyrus considers to be bad-smelling rabble. Of course, Cyrus Spitama speaks with a very modern, ironic voice supplied to him by Gore Vidal-- the political intrigues in which Cyrus finds himself immersed are likewise familiar territory for fans of Vidal's historical fiction. But the narrator's delightfully wicked observations are the icing on a narrative of truly epic scope--out of his desire to understand the origins of the world, Cyrus undertakes journeys to India, where he encounters disciples of the Buddha, China, where he engages Confucius in philosophical conversation while the great sage fishes by the riverside. Creation offers insights into classical history laced with scintillating wit narrative brio.