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In many ways, Creation can lay claim to being the motherlode of all historical fiction novels.

What a period Vidal chose to write about! He simpky couldn't have picked a more fertile time. Requiring only a little elasticity with regards to the accepted dates, the roll call of historical heavyweights making an appearance in this book is simply astonishing.

Pericles, Xerxes, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Zoroaster - names to conjure with one and all.

Persian diplomat Cyrus Spitama, grandson of Zoroaster and childhood friend of Xerxes, is our guide as he journeys across the ancient world, from Babylon to Athens, across India and China and back again.

He meets all those luminaries mentioned above and many others, allowing Vidal to examine the actions and beliefs of each. It's like skim-reading a joint honours degree in religion and philosophy.

You have to admire the immense ambition, aligned to a vaulting self-confidence necessary to take all these giants of world history on in turn, and in the same book too.

Vidal does it his own wsy. The Greeks in particular take something of a pasting, as Vidal shows them how they must have looked to the Persians, little more than pesky flies buzzing around the foot of an elephant.

I love the Anciebt Greeks, so this was a tough pill for me to swallow. Most recyclers of history tend to present the Persians from the Greek perspective, as uncouth hoards of barbarians and fanatics.

Add to the epic scope of the narrative the fact that it's written by Gore Vidal, so every sentence is sinuous, every line of dialogue full of sly intelligence, and what more could you want?

Nothing more. This is an essential novel.