Product Description

In this award-winning, internationally acclaimed novel, Tharoor has masterfully recast the 2,000 year-old epic, The Mahabharata, with fictional but highly recognizable events and characters from twentieth-century Indian politics. Chronicling the Indian struggle for freedom and independence from Great Britain, Tharoor directs his hilarious satire as much against Indian foibles as the bumbling of the British rulers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #602658 in Books
• Published on: 1993-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The delightfully suspect and satirical tone of Tharoor's title informs and enlivens his monumental tale. In an opening disclaimer, the author cites the Mahabharata , an ancient Hindu epic, as the source of his inspiration. The story he retells, however, is also a thinly veiled account of the people and events that shaped India during the struggle for independence from British rule. Tharoor recasts these in a mythological, fictive realm, skillfully interweaving elements of traditional Eastern and Western literature. The epic, the sonnet, the novel and the folk tale all help to shape the narrative, just as history and myth, dream and reality intertwine in every chapter, calling into question the validity of categories. "One must be wary of history by anecdote," warns the narrator; one must be wary of "history" itself, suggests Tharoor. Despite his stereotypical treatment of British and Indian characters, he animates history with the imagination of an artist and the philosophy of a sage. Throughout, Tharoor appropriates titles, phrases and figures from the work of a pantheon of "first-world" writers, ranging from E. M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling to Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Koestler (and even including his contemporary Salman Rushdie)--a subtle but potent reversal of the traditional tide of cultural colonialism.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Basing his convoluted story on the Mahabharata , with its 18 chapters or Parvans and similar incidents or characters (e.g., a blind king; five brothers sharing one wife), Tharoor coalesces myth, dreams, folklore, religion, and legend in this first-person, near-death life narration of Ved Vyas. The reader suspends disbelief as the garrulous old man omnisciently relates secret conversations, lustful couplings, the assassination of Ganga Data (read Ghandi), and the intimacies of Lord and Lady Drewpad (read Mountbatten). Overambitious Tharoor amalgamates the epic's components with India's freedom struggles with Great Britain. Intermittently humorous, satiric, and fantastic, with word-play and recurrent verse, this work is most effective when discussing Data/Ghandi: his enemas, celibacy, hunger strikes, and tragic failure to bring peace and well-being to India, where today corruption and double-dealing insidiously multiply.
- Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Shashi Tharoor was born in London and brought up in Bombay and Calcutta. A winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, he is the interim head of the Department of Public Information of the United Nations.

Customer Reviews

The Great Stories
Whether it's the "Iliad," exploring the nature of the warrior, or the "Mahabarata"," explaining politics, the great stories are always with us and provide illumination to our seemingly modern lives. With "The Great Indian Novel," Shashi Tharoor shows us that "everything old is new again." "The Great Indian Novel," is a re-interpretation of the Mahabarata framed in India's struggle for independence, and the political aftermath of colonization. The famous make their appearances under altered names, and Mr. Tharoor manages to make the Mahabarata current while making modern Indian politics somewhat understandable. The book is also very funny. I don't know if this is a book for the casual reader, but if you're interested in India I think you'll find it quite fascinating.

Nothing new under the sun.
For me, the book works in a number of ways:

1. Recasting the Mahabharata into modern India.

Two bits struck me: the story of Karna, the driver's son, and Drona teaching the Panduva. The first because of the way personal brilliance can be discounted on the basis of family tree; the second for the retelling of aiming at the crow and Drona's promise to Arjuna.

2. The names.

Apart from the characters from the Mahabharata, there's also whole new cast of characters who reflect the modern world. Two names stand out in my mind. "Gaga Shah" is the story's name for the Aga Kahn. Given the antics of the various Aga Kahns, "Crazy Emperor" is not a bad characterization. Then there's Zinna as Karna - "The Hacker Off" - hacking off Pakistan - "Karnistan" - for himself.

3. Showing the relevance of myth.

Personally, I have a tendency to discount the mythos in favor of the logos, but mythos comes first, and recurs. Casting the Mahabharata onto modern history is a great way to show there's nothing fundamentally new under the sun.

This book made for a great over-Christmas, by-the-fire-with-an-adult-beverage read.

Celebration of India
This book is witty, hilarious and engrossing. Reader with no knowledge of Indian history may not find any interest in this book. The book celebrates India in the true sense combining India's struggle of thirty five hundered years ago to the more recent cause of independence. I had never understood Mahabharata so profoundly as after reading this book. Whether the Mahabharata is an historical account or a mere story makes no difference in this issue. The existence of such a story (Mahabharata) factually or on a literary level proves the same thing-that the idea of the subcontinent of India as a cultural unit clearly existed before any of the modern nation-states had come into being. In this regard no nation, subcontinent or religion has an epic of such proportion or which reflects the integration of such a large region as India through the Mahabharata. In fact it compasses all the domains of knowledge and all the issues of human life and culture. It is not just a religious book but the document for an entire civilization. Shashi Tharoor has done an exceptional work in creating similarities between two different times. One can only enjoy this book!