As a person of Indian parentage growing up in the USA, it’s always frustrating to find Greek epics and Norse myths so much a part of everyday speech and culture, but not our own Indian ones. My sister and I were both in a bookstore when we saw this book and we jumped on it! She’s just married and has moved away, and she was the one who paid for it, so I had to read it real fast. What a book! It just blew me away.
She took it with her and read it and then messaged me and we spent hours discussing it and then searching on the net for the other books in the series. You have to just read this book to know what Ashok Banker has done. He has brought the Ramayana back to life for a whole new generation of readers, and it’s amazing that a big American publisher is bringing out the book in such a high-profile way. I tried to get my American friends to read it, but some of them, even those who read fantasy (which I guess this is, though it’s not the Tolkein/Brooks kind of fantasy at all) were a bit put off by the Indian words. But a couple who did read it (I bought a second copy later, couldn’t stay without it) loved it. So that’s the thing with this book: Once begun, unputtdownable, or however you spell that!
Forget what anyone says, just read it. I’m so looking forward to the others inthe series. If Ashok Banker could do this with the Ramayana, which I always thought was a bit wierd and simplistic (how could Rama exile Sita after he fought a war for her?) then imagine what he could do with the Mahabharata! Strength to your writing arm, Mr Banker! Write on!
Aarti