Dictator

Dictator

Philip Terry2019
Dictator recreates Gilgamesh using the 1,500-word vocabulary of Globish, put together by Jean-Paul Nerrière. Globish is a business language, appropriate to translate cuneiform which emerged from the need to record business transactions. Nerrière considered it the world dialect of the third millenium; likewise Akkadian, the language of Gilgamesh, was the lingua franca of communications in the Near East. This link between script, language and business is there in the substance of the poem. An underpinning theme involving trade, here trade in hard wood and access to forests for building materials, links the poem to recent wars in and around Iraq, where the contemporary commodity is oil. This in turn links the poem to related issues such as migration and the refugee crisis. Working with refugees in Palermo in 2017, Terry was involved with putting on a puppet version of Gilgamesh where the children related viscerally to the story, particularly the boat scenes.
Sign up to use

This book appears on the shelf

The Lifecycle of Software Objects
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Ways of Seeing
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Alchemist
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Highly Sensitive Person
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron

This book appears on the shelf to-buy

Exhalation
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Ulysses
Ulysses by James Joyce
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Circle
The Circle by Dave Eggers
American Dirt
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Riot Baby
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

This book appears on the shelf Usa

Blacktop Wasteland
Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby
Zero K
Zero K by Don DeLillo
A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Vanishing Half
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett