-- Newsweek

"A flowing, unbroken version that reads as effortlessly as a novel...with startlingly familiar hopes, fears, and lusts. Mitchell...cracks open the lessons in Gilgamesh by rebuilding its clay fragments into a poem easy on the eyes and the transcultural imagination....Vibrant, earnest, unfussily accessible.... The muscular eloquence and rousing simplicity of Mitchell's four-beat line effectively unleash the grand vehemence of the epic's battle scenes, and the characters' ominous visions emerge with uncanny clarity."

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Utterly enthralling reading, thanks to Mr. Mitchell's skill and flair in recasting the ancient text."

-- The New York Sun

"Seamus Heaney isn't the only one intent on making the classics relevant to our times. Mitchell...offers a limpid retelling of this story about absolute power.... Its message of love, loss, and endurance [is] rendered in fresh, forceful language."

-- Los Angeles Times

"The mysterious, sinewy surge of his verse [is] thoroughly modern, yet an uncanny evocation of the primeval."

-- The Boston Globe