Chanakya's Chant - Softcover

Ashwin Sanghi

3.74

24,203 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9380658672 ISBN 13: 9789380658674

Publisher: Westland, 2011

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The year is 340 BC. A hunted, haunted Brahmin youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold, cunning, calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod, Alexander the Great.

Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other, he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire. History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya.

But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennia later, in the avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India who becomes puppeteer to a host of ambitious individuals--including a certain slumchild who grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman.

Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient Bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive politics and this landscape is Gangasagar's feasting ground. Can this wily pandit--who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance--bring about another miracle of a united India?

Will Chanakya's chant work again? Ashwin Sanghi, the bestselling author of The Rozabal Line, brings you yet another spinechiller.

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About the Author:

The name "Shawn Haigins" is a pseudonym. In fact, it's an anagram of the author's real name, "Ashwin Sanghi". Ashwin writes extensively on history, religion, and politics. "The Rozabal Line" his first novel was completed in 2007. The book was self-published in the US in 2007 under his pen name, "Shawn Haigins". The book went through several revisions over 2007 and 2008 and a revised edition under Ashwin's own name was released by Tata-Westland Ltd. & Tranquebar Press for the Indian subcontinent in 2008 and again in 2010, which went on to remain a national bestseller for several months. Ashwin's second novel, "Chanakya's Chant", is a historical-political thriller released by Westland in January 2011. Ashwin is an entrepreneur and holds a master's degree from Yale and lives in India with his wife and son. He's also pursuing a doctorate in Creative Writing. Writing is his passion and, in his own words, he's "an entrepreneur by day and novelist by night". Why does he do it? Sanghi says that "Writing is my way of reclaiming my sanity in an otherwise insane world."

Review:

Savage and poetic, it's a book that you cannot put down... --Deccan Chronicle, Bangalore

A gripping, fast-paced read, the novel is a true thriller... --People Magazine, India

Keep the internal monologues and descriptions as taut as a-held-by-the-thumb sacred thread and we have Ashwin Sanghi's cracker of a page turner, Chanakya's Chant. --Hindustan Times, New Delhi

I'm utterly enthralled. A delightfully interesting and gripping read... the historical research is deeply impressive. --Dr. Shashi Tharoor

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