WHO LEFT GOD PLAYING WITH MUD?!

Every year it seems the writing world is awash with new books brimming across new genres and subsections. Works that are meta commentaries on current issues or cultural happenings, presented in fantasy or science fiction to paradoxically add relevance to the reader. So it’s always interesting to discover a work that reads almost like mythology or fables. Author Namir L. Naoum’s new book, Who Left God Playing With Mud?!, is equal parts daring and refreshing. The sober approach the author takes to explaining and exploring cruelty, the oddity of humanity’s nature, its ability to be both profound and profane.

There is a quality about Who Left God Playing With Mud?! that reminds you of all those heroes and demigods of our literary past. You see shades and shadows of the gods gambling over the fate of Troy, the humans made of clay doing their respective god’s shadow boxing.

This can be found in the synopsis, A few heroes will endure the assaults of despair, while others succumb to the whims of the gods, who, seemingly in a quest to satisfy an insatiable lust for blood, had gifted the humans with fertile minds for the sole purpose of enhancing a savagery far more amusing in its gore than that of the wildest beasts. Naoum doesn’t pull back from the graphic nature of the time, the cruelty and disregard many had for others. We are so used to imagining that the ancient world was a communal world, that didn’t suffer such cruelty. Yet, this ancient world seems almost foreign, alien in how it handles life.

Naoum has created a rich tapestry for the reader, transporting us throughout the ancient world, the glory of Babylon, the binary births of civilization and systematic cruelty. In ancient glorious Mesopotamia, a vast assortment of characters fill the book’s pages, the author grabbing and creating every single manner of human experience from the period. From priests to heretics, a wise school master, nobles and slaves, a princess, one thriving merchant, a struggling boatman, sculptors and a serial killer in a love triangle.

There is a lot to this tale and Naoum does an outstanding job of world building. The drama and prose come at you with a rush and don’t venture into various pitfalls that await other authors who attempt such a cast narrative.

This is a compelling book that asks much from the reader, that takes chances in its content, and that presents one of the most engaging and earnest portrayals of the ancient world.