The Great Indian Novel - Softcover

Shashi Tharoor; Tharoor, Shashi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140120491 ISBN 13: 9780140120493

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1989

Synopsis

The Great Indian Novel takes its title not from the auther's estimate of its contents but in deference to its primary source of inspiration, the ancient epic the Mahabharata.

About this title

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.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0140120491
• ISBN 13: 9780140120493
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432