WHO LEFT GOD PLAYING WITH MUD?!

Murder, war, conspiracies, religious antagonism, and holy harlotry roil ancient Sumeria in this historical novel.

Naoum’s saga unfolds in the city of Uruk on the Euphrates River during the bloody reign of King Sargon of Akkad, circa 2300 B.C. Life there revolves around power, sex, and the gods, as embodied in two institutions: the intrigue-filled court of the cruel, capricious Sargon (“Innocent, guilty—I don’t care. Execute! No mercy, execute!” reads a typical soliloquy) and the temple of Ishtar, goddess of love, and her popular cult of ritual sex work (her virgin acolytes must sell their bodies to any man who tosses them a “silver piece” before they can wed). A teeming cast of characters swirls through the hyperactive narrative, including Ibrahem, Sargon’s manipulative court sculptor, who maneuvers the king into killing the High Priest Ishullanu during a public sex ceremony honoring the god Anu. Then there’s Ibrahem’s son Isaa, a scribe who falls in love with Princess Enheduanna, Sargon’s daughter and an Ishtar follower. And there’s Mayram, a gorgeous temple sex worker who poses as a virgin to lure noblemen and kills them while they copulate (Ibrahem uses her to assassinate his and Sargon’s enemies). Larger developments occur during all the plotting and fornication, including a rebellion in the city of Ur and the rise of the monotheistic cult of Invisible One, which Isaa is drawn to. Backgrounding all the stabbings and beheadings is a sweeping, richly textured portrait of Mesopotamian culture, full of lore about everything from how to make a clay writing tablet to regional mythologies that feel like a polytheistic draft of Genesis.

The characters are vibrant if often grotesque—Sargon’s villainy is fearsome enough to merit a carved granite stele—and Naoum’s storytelling and prose are vigorous and evocative in their depictions of sex, violence, and splattery combinations of sex and violence. (“[H]e could only watch the blade plunge down into his chest…Mayram reached the peaks of ecstasy with the swell of his lust inside her and the burst of his lifeblood over her skin. Passionately, she closed her mouth on his, sucking out the last of his pleasure moans and silencing the groans of his death throes.”) In a deeper vein, the author explores characters’ religious feelings, which are sometimes plangent and heartfelt (“Tammara placed her daughter’s body in a jar that she sealed with bitumen. Every night, she would cradle the jar as she sang a sad melody, hoping that the goddess of the netherworld, Ereshkigal, would have pity on her, and by some miracle bring her baby back”) and sometimes cynical about the exploitation that theology justifies (“the rituals that reap the most profits are the ones that exploit the believers’ fears of the gods—drivel like, honor this god to keep the demons away…or the best of them all—a pilgrimage to some holy shrine is a must”). The result is a colorful if sometimes lurid period piece that will keep readers turning pages.

An entertaining Bronze Age soap-opera full of carnage, carnality, and a little hard-bitten philosophy.