3 Review(s)

The greatest Indian story ever told of a war between two factions of a family, the Mahabharata has continued to capture the imagination of readers over centuries. While the dispute over land and kingdom between the warring cousins—the Pandavas and the Kauravas—forms the chief narrative, the primary concern of the Mahabharata is about the conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Given its formidable length of 80,000 shlokas, with innumerable subplots that accommodate fascinating meanderings and digressions, the epic has rarely been translated in full. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers in this premium collector’s edition.