Naamah: A Novel

Front Cover
Penguin, Apr 9, 2019 - Fiction - 304 pages
"A dreamy and transgressive feminist retelling of the Great Flood from the perspective of Noah's wife as she wrestles with the mysterious metaphysics of womanhood at the end of the world." —O, The Oprah Magazine

With the coming of the Great Flood—the mother of all disasters—only one family was spared, drifting on an endless sea, waiting for the waters to subside. We know the story of Noah, moved by divine vision to launch their escape. Now, in a work of astounding invention, acclaimed writer Sarah Blake reclaims the story of his wife, Naamah, the matriarch who kept them alive. Here is the woman torn between faith and fury, lending her strength to her sons and their wives, caring for an unruly menagerie of restless creatures, silently mourning the lover she left behind. Here is the woman escaping into the unreceded waters, where a seductive angel tempts her to join a strange and haunted world. Here is the woman tormented by dreams and questions of her own—questions of service and self-determination, of history and memory, of the kindness or cruelty of fate.

In fresh and modern language, Blake revisits the story of the Ark that rescued life on earth, and rediscovers the agonizing burdens endured by the woman at the heart of the story. Naamah is a parable for our time: a provocative fable of body, spirit, and resilience.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
5
Section 2
20
Section 3
32
Section 4
37
Section 5
52
Section 6
64
Section 7
81
Section 8
95
Section 15
165
Section 16
175
Section 17
188
Section 18
196
Section 19
207
Section 20
214
Section 21
221
Section 22
230

Section 9
102
Section 10
108
Section 11
120
Section 12
131
Section 13
138
Section 14
151
Section 23
239
Section 24
262
Section 25
276
Section 26
285
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2019)

Sarah Blake is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, Slice, and elsewhere.

Bibliographic information