The Palace of Illusions - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Rating: 5/10

Review:

The Palace of Illusions is a re-telling of the Indian epic Mahabharata, from the point of view of Draupadi, the much-revered heroine of the tale. I had heard a lot of good things about this bestseller and so I went in with great expectations. Also, another book based on the Mahabharata, Shashi Tharoor's astoundingly brilliant The Great Indian Novel was always bound to come up in my mind as a scale for comparison. As I found out soon enough, The Palace of Illusions is disappointing. 

The biggest problem I have with this book is that it adds little to the Mahabharata. Rather, it simplifies the tale way too much and trivializes the grand original. The Mahabharata is an epic, full of detail, full of complex characters and difficult situations, but The Palace of Illusions is too small a book to do justice to an epic.  

Major scenes of great significance, like Draupadi's disrobing, are reduced to a few paragraphs. Characters and relationships aren't dealt with in detail and depend more on the reader's preexistent knowledge of the Mahabharata. Strangely, to me, Draupadi wasn't as fascinating a narrator as I thought she would be. With her as the narrator, one would expect a lot of insight and opinions on major events and characters, but that is not the case. The narrative meandering to the stories and points of views of other characters, plays spoilsport. 

Divakaruni's style of writing reminded me of Philippa Gregory's books which is actually quite a good thing here. The book works best as a short summary of the great old epic of India. I'm left with a feeling that the premise of the book that holds a lot of promise, is left unfulfilled in the end. 

If only the book was as grand, detailed and gorgeous as its beautiful cover!! 

This book is one of the ten books I have scheduled to read for the South Asian Author Challenge.

The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor

Rating : 10/10

Yes, it is that good. If you love the Mahabharata and love to discuss Indian politics and haven't read this book yet, go pick it. Now. You'll never regret it!

Review:

One of the first pages of the book has a note from the author which goes:

''A hasty note of disclaimer is due to those readers who may feel, justifiably, that the work that follows is neither great, nor authentically Indian, nor even much of a novel. The Great Indian Novel takes its title not from the author's estimate of its contents but in deference to its primary source of inspiration, the ancient epic the Mahabharata'

This modesty-affected disclaimer isn't quite necessary since this novel indeed is, a Great Indian Novel. The Mahabharata is India's epic and politics, of course, our epic passtime and to bring them both together sounds epic. But can Shashi Tharoor pull it off?

The Great Indian Novel is the song of India- its great epic and its great struggle for independence and (later) democracy, interwoven inseparably. The relevance of epics is oft spoken about, but you hardly get to see the 'relevance' put in front of your eyes like you do here.

With a keen, often too sharp sense of humour, a vivid narrative, often lined with inside jokes, Tharoor has written what is probably the greatest Indian political satire I've read. Thoroughly entertaining, be it verse or words, with unexpected turns of philosophy, wicked humour, breathtaking creativity and a clear sense of emotion and patriotism, The Great Indian Novel and its characters are memorable to say the least.

To the reader who's always been interested in Indian politics, this book could soon become your haven. Tracking references, 'getting the joke', trailing hints, often staring wide-eyed at pages wondering how someone managed to take such liberties in pulling the leg of our 'national icons', The Great Indian Novel has a sort of excitement and thrill that the likes of The Da Vinci Code can never achieve.               

While reading the book, I did think to myself that I should probably not be enjoying the book this much. And even if I did, its not all credit to Tharoor, for the The Great Indian Novel is more or less 'The Mahabharata Remixed'. Isn't it? But no, inter-connecting our mythical/religious heroes and our national leaders in a way that is spell-binding, in a way that would make you sit up, is no easy task ( I can think of a hundred ways how this book could have gone Oh-so-wrong ) and precisely why this book is a triumph.

Thanks to my friends for gifting this book for my birthday last month. It's definitely one of the best books I've ever read and probably the best book I've read so far, this year! =)