Naamah

A Novel

By: Sarah Blake

Narrated by: Shayna Small

A wildly imaginative novel of the reluctant heroine who rescued life on earth.

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.

©2019 Sarah Blake (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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)

“A poetic debut of biblical proportions.... [In] mesmerizing prose poem-esque sections, the novel explores themes of sexuality, purpose, loss, love, and faith.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Sarah Blake's dazzling novel Naamah offers a new vision of storytelling and belief, rendered through the body of a woman. In this beautiful reconception of a flood, Noah's wife emerges as an earth-bound soul savior as well as a desiring body capable of generating epic myth. In between hope and hell, and up against the divine, Naamah reminds us that the bodies and voices of women were always the heart of the story. Naamah is a new myth-making triumph.” (Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children)

Not a good read

The story on NAAMAH, Noah’s wife and the ark was basically written as a fantasy. Explicit sex scenes and NAAMAH is having sexual relations outside her marriage to Noah. Difficult to follow the story line and under water dialogue was crazy.

Naamah’s Journey

Beautifully narrated story, both an alternative view of the flood tale, and a beautiful feminist telling. It weaves a dreamy vision of encounters with real, or are they imaginary beings, to address the old notions of supernatural views of religious belief with the tension of disbelief and the fear that that engenders. All of it may be in the mind struggling with reality and attaining health of mind and body.

this is not an historical novel!!!

This book was full of homosexuality and incest and will be a shock to people of faith.
I can only surmise that the author is an atheist and could not choose a genre, so she just threw odd time traveling ,incest and
alternate life choices together in the hope it would appeal to enough people that they would not notice the poor writing skills.
I am a 76 year old great grandmother and was looking for an historical novel about Noah and his family and nothing in the book description of this book gave the slightest indication that it was trash.
I would appreciate your removing it from my kindles and replacing my token.
no, I am not a homophobe. I am just not fond of this kind of deception in advertising and certainly not time traveling incest.

Excellent narration of a weird and wonderful story

This book was so surprising and smart. Blake thinks of every detail (great world building!) and sometimes when the story seems to veer into “really? I don’t know if I can follow you down that path” territory, she pulls it off.

Brave and beautiful!

This novel is a provocative, vivid, and deeply felt re-imaging of the flood myth. It centers around Namaah, the wife of Noah, who (as women do) inhabits many roles—mother, lover, caretaker, visionary, and midwife. She alone has the courage to question and confront the God who has wiped out most of human and animal life. Thank you, Sarah Blake, for upending a patriarchal canon. Prepare to be transported and transformed by this brave and beautiful work.