Creation
by Gore Vidal, Anthony Burgess
Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
One man personally meets Confucius, Buddha, and Socrates — and Gore Vidal somehow makes that feel completely believable.
- Great if you want: ancient world history delivered through sardonic, eyewitness irony
- Listening experience: leisurely and dense — rewards patience across all 27 hours
- Narration: Hillgartner's measured tone suits Vidal's dry, patrician voice well
- Skip if: you want narrative momentum over philosophical digression
About This Audiobook
Gore Vidal's panoramic novel follows Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and Persian ambassador to the courts of the fifth century BC, as he encounters Confucius, the Buddha, Socrates, and the political powers of his age on an odyssey that spans the known ancient world. Through Cyrus's eyes, Vidal examines the philosophical and religious upheavals that shaped civilization, bringing his characteristic wit and skepticism to the great questions of existence, governance, and the divine. Creation is both a historical novel of extraordinary scope and a meditation on what human beings have made of the world they were given.
Malcolm Hillgartner narrates with the measured intelligence the material demands, sustaining an authoritative presence across the novel's considerable runtime. The multiple cultural settings, from Persia to India to China to Greece, require a narrator who can shift registers without losing continuity, and Hillgartner handles the transitions with ease. At over twenty-seven hours, Creation is a commitment, but Hillgartner's performance makes the ancient world feel inhabited rather than reconstructed.