The Flood didn't come suddenly as a big surprise. It came at the end of a long, tormented story. Men just went on multiplying and the noise they made was ever more irksome . . . I remember days of desperation.'In The Tablet of Destinies, Roberto Calasso tells the story of Utnapishtim, who disobeyed the gods by building a quadrangular boat to save humans and animals from the Flood sent to destroy them.Banished for eternity to the island of Dilmun, Utnapishtim eventually finds company when Sinbad the Sailor is shipwrecked and arrives on that very same island thousands of years later. Through an imagined conversation between the two castaways, Calasso explores questions that have haunted human civilizations ever since: the limits of courage, the depths of loss, the power of hope and the meaning of sacrifice.