The Great Indian Novel
2011 • 409 pages
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
In this award-winning novel, Tharoor has masterfully recast the two-thousand-year-old epic, The Mahabharata, with fictional but highly recognizable events and characters from twentieth-century Indian politics. Nothing is sacred in this deliciously irreverent, witty, and deeply intelligent retelling of modern Indian history and the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata. Alternately outrageous and instructive, hilarious and moving, it is a dazzling tapestry of prose and verse that satirically, but also poignantly, chronicles the struggle for Indian freedom and independence.
Reviews with the most likes.
Very well written. It is no easy task to draw parallelisms to the Mahabharata. Yet, Shashi Tharoor does a great job of fitting in our freedom struggle and the years that follow, almost as if Mahabharata was based off of them! Definitely a recommended read given its unique symbolism, unmatched alliteration and a style of writing almost certainly missing in Indian writers.
Somehow, I feel as if I would have to give this book another read to better understand a few things Tharoor has tried to convey.
