Product Description
The Story behind the Bhagavad Gita: a baby abandoned. A queen dishonoured. And a cataclysmic war that would end the Third Age of Mankind.
When novelist Aruna Sharan took an unofficial poll among her Western friends, she discovered that not one of them had read the great Indian epic Mahabharata. It was then that she decided: the time was right to self-publish Sons of Gods—the “secret baby” she had been nourishing for almost years—as an e-book.
Not that there is any dearth of "Mahabharatas" out there, written by a variety of authors both Western and Indian. It’s just that to date, not one of these versions has yet managed to capture the public imagination. The Mahabharata is still a book that many people think they should read, but never do.
For most Hindus, of course, the Mahabharata is unarguably the greatest story ever told (with the Ramayana a close second), a marvellous blend of page-turning entertainment and deep wisdom, peopled with larger-than-life characters who live forever in their hearts. It is at the very core of Indian culture, the story behind their central scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. As the last Governor-General of India, C. Rajagopalachari—himself a Mahabharata author—says: “It belongs to the world and not only to India.
"To the people of India, indeed, this epic has been an unfailing and perennial source of spiritual strength; learnt at the mother’s knee with reverence and love, it has inspired great men to heroic deeds as well as enabled the humble to face their trials with fortitude and faith.”
The highest literature transcends regionalism, and through it, when we are properly attuned, we realise the essential oneness of the human family.
The Mahabharata is of this calibre.
This new version strives to capture the vital essence of the vast original in a single volume: a continuous story dramatised so as to captivate the reader with living, breathing characters, spiritually alive and retaining the powerful spirit of the original, yet restructured into the familiar form of the modern novel.
The story in a nutshell, as told in Sons of Gods:
Karna, sired by the Sungod Surya, is born to the unmarried princess Kunti. She abandons him to the river; he is found and raised by a low-caste couple.
Spurned by all, Karna finds a friend and ally in the avaricious prince Duryodhana. But Duryodhana's worst enemies just happen to be the five brothers, the Pandavas, the noblest warriors in the world. And their mother is Kunti, that princess who still grieves for the child she gave away as a young girl.
Karna and Arjuna -- the middle and mightiest Pandava -- each vow to kill each other without knowing they are brothers. As tensions mount, so does their hatred for each other; until, in the cataclysmic war that will wipe out the entire warrior caste, they meet in the inevitable facedown. This is war in which no-one can be the winner.
Aruna Sharan is the pen name of Sharon Maas, author of the best-selling HarperCollins novel Of Marriageable Age and two other novels. Of Marriageable Age is soon to be made available as an e-book.
When novelist Aruna Sharan took an unofficial poll among her Western friends, she discovered that not one of them had read the great Indian epic Mahabharata. It was then that she decided: the time was right to self-publish Sons of Gods—the “secret baby” she had been nourishing for almost years—as an e-book.
Not that there is any dearth of "Mahabharatas" out there, written by a variety of authors both Western and Indian. It’s just that to date, not one of these versions has yet managed to capture the public imagination. The Mahabharata is still a book that many people think they should read, but never do.
For most Hindus, of course, the Mahabharata is unarguably the greatest story ever told (with the Ramayana a close second), a marvellous blend of page-turning entertainment and deep wisdom, peopled with larger-than-life characters who live forever in their hearts. It is at the very core of Indian culture, the story behind their central scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. As the last Governor-General of India, C. Rajagopalachari—himself a Mahabharata author—says: “It belongs to the world and not only to India.
"To the people of India, indeed, this epic has been an unfailing and perennial source of spiritual strength; learnt at the mother’s knee with reverence and love, it has inspired great men to heroic deeds as well as enabled the humble to face their trials with fortitude and faith.”
The highest literature transcends regionalism, and through it, when we are properly attuned, we realise the essential oneness of the human family.
The Mahabharata is of this calibre.
This new version strives to capture the vital essence of the vast original in a single volume: a continuous story dramatised so as to captivate the reader with living, breathing characters, spiritually alive and retaining the powerful spirit of the original, yet restructured into the familiar form of the modern novel.
The story in a nutshell, as told in Sons of Gods:
Karna, sired by the Sungod Surya, is born to the unmarried princess Kunti. She abandons him to the river; he is found and raised by a low-caste couple.
Spurned by all, Karna finds a friend and ally in the avaricious prince Duryodhana. But Duryodhana's worst enemies just happen to be the five brothers, the Pandavas, the noblest warriors in the world. And their mother is Kunti, that princess who still grieves for the child she gave away as a young girl.
Karna and Arjuna -- the middle and mightiest Pandava -- each vow to kill each other without knowing they are brothers. As tensions mount, so does their hatred for each other; until, in the cataclysmic war that will wipe out the entire warrior caste, they meet in the inevitable facedown. This is war in which no-one can be the winner.
Aruna Sharan is the pen name of Sharon Maas, author of the best-selling HarperCollins novel Of Marriageable Age and two other novels. Of Marriageable Age is soon to be made available as an e-book.
