THE SHIP OF ISHTAR

The Ship of Ishtar is a fantasy novel by American writer A. Merritt. Originally published as a magazine serial in 1924, it has appeared in book form innumerable times. The novel depicts a modern archaeologist who has to intervene in an eternal conflict between the deities Ishtar and Nergal. In the novel, the deities have possessed the bodies of their human priests. The author uses evocative language and intense images to convey a sense of the marvelous and mysterious. It is Kenton's fate to intervene in the frozen cosmic struggle between Ishtar and Nergal, to fall in love with Sharane, and to gain Klaneth as his mortal enemy. The book builds tension through the device of letting Kenton's tie to the ship periodically become so weak that he falls back, unwilling, to his New York home. Kenton's tenuous psychic connection to the ship represents the reader's involvement in the fantasy. At any moment the ship may fade from reality, and both Kenton and the reader will be imprisoned in the mundane world of the everyday.