Crossing Time – Heaven’s Gate, Volume II

 

Paradis perdus (Paradise Lost) opened La Traversée des temps (Crossing time), a unique adventure story, with Heaven’s Gate as volume II.

Miraculously reappearing century after century, Eric-Emmanuel’s latest hero continues his journey down the river of time and sets off on a new search in the Ancient Near East. Noam is looking for his beloved who vanished in strange circumstances. Accompanied by his dog, he discovers a world in transformation, Mesopotamia, otherwise known as the Land of Fresh Water, where humans have just invented cities, writing and astronomy.
In the buzzing, vibrant city of Babel, glorious by both night and day, he comes up against the tyrant Nemrod, who resorts to slavery to build the highest tower ever conceived to act as Heaven’s gate and give access to the gods. Battling a revolving door of intrigues, treachery and pitfalls, Noam, the healer, finds himself in all manner of settings and meets characters of every kind. There’s Maël the child-poet, Gawan the mysterious Magician, Queen Kubaba mischievous and razor sharp, and Abraham Chief of the Hebrew Nomads, in denial of the new civilisation.
What will Noam choose to do? Will he sacrifice his deepest inclinations to devote his life to fight injustice?

In Heaven's Gate, with cheerful erudition, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt dusts off an era madelegendary by the Bible. With the pen of a visionary and informed by the latest research in Assyriology, he reproduces the complexity and glories of Mesopotamia, a region we know so little about but to which we owe so much.