The Mahabharata tells a story of such violence and tragedy that many
people in India refuse to keep the full text in their homes, fearing
that if they do, they will invite a disastrous fate upon their house.
Covering everything from creation to destruction, this ancient poem
remains an indelible part of Hindu culture and a landmark in ancient
literature.
Centuries of listeners and readers have been drawn to The Mahabharata,
which began as disparate oral ballads and grew into a sprawling epic.
The modern version is famously long, and at more than 1.8 million
words--seven times the combined lengths of the Iliad and Odyssey--it can
be incredibly daunting.
Contemporary readers have a much more accessible entry point to this
important work, thanks to R. K. Narayan's masterful translation and
abridgement of the poem. Now with a new foreword by Wendy Doniger, as
well as a concise character and place guide and a family tree, The
Mahabharata is ready for a new generation of readers. As Wendy Doniger
explains in the foreword, "Narayan tells the stories so well because
they're all his stories." He grew up hearing them, internalizing their
mythology, which gave him an innate ability to choose the right passages
and their best translations.
In this elegant translation, Narayan ably distills a tale that is both
traditional and constantly changing. He draws from both scholarly
analysis and creative interpretation and vividly fuses the spiritual
with the secular. Through this balance he has produced a translation
that is not only clear, but graceful, one that stands as its own story
as much as an adaptation of a larger work.
