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Taking Mesopotamia was originally inspired by Jenny Lewis’s search for her lost father—the young South Wales Borderer who led his troops across the desert by starlight in the ill-fated Mesopotamian campaign of World War I. Through reconstructed diary extracts, witness statements, and a mixture of formal poems and free verse, the book extends into a wider exploration of the recent Iraq war seen from a woman’s point of view—the horror of sons and daughters being sent into battle, the struggles of widows and orphans. Woven through the personal and geopolitical content is a more ancient strand inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s first piece of written literature, whose themes of hubris, abuse of power, and fear of death show us how little the world has changed in 4,000 years.
