'Mani Rao's courageous approach to the Gita not only revitalizes an ancient philosophy but also restores power and majesty to the text's poetry.' - Arshia Sattar, author of Maryada

'My life is so much easier as I don't have to go through maddening archaic prose thanks to Mani Rao's uncluttered, refined poetry.' - Devdutt Pattanaik, author and mythologist

'Mani Rao brings a felicitous mix of textually informed vigilance and playful irreverence to bear on her translation of the Bhagavad Gita. With its contemporary musicality and relaxed tone, Rao's version opens up this central text of modern Hinduism for a new generation of readers.' - Ranjit Hoskote, author of Icelight

'The great virtue of the Bhagavad Gita is courage, and in her luminous new translation, Rao is courageous indeed. Her lines venture to keep pace with the original, stride for stride, revelation for revelation. As Wittgenstein wrote, "Courage is always original." I can avow that Rao's is the first truly original version of this sacred text to appear in decades.' - Donald Revell, poet, and translator of Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire

'Mani Rao has transformed the most famous spiritual poem in India into a multilayered poem, giving shapes to multiple meanings and sounds to multiple forms. Just as Arjuna saw the universe in Krishna's mouth and like the endless tree, the tree of life, which reveals its roots above and leaves below, Mani Rao has shown us this universe, this endless life with its supporting philosophy, as a poem to be perceived directly, intuitively, cutting through reason and linearity to arrive at the underlying undying poetry and grace of this epic work.' - Frederick Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of Iowa

'We see [Rao's] Sanskrit skills shine through in puns that span two languages separated by thousands of years and dozens of isoglosses. Except for the first chapter, almost every word of Rao's translation has a direct correlate in the Sanskrit text, and yet certain words stand out more than others: they leap from the page, out of their context, rendered visible by the words and spaces around them-or lack thereof. The text is taken apart; Rao does not attempt to give us full, grammatical sentences, but rather, stark fragments of speech. By breaking the rigid confines of the thirty-two syllable anustubh metre that dominates the Gita, and by isolating and repeating significant words, Rao is burning down the house in order to show what it is made of and to illuminate its surroundings.' - Eric Gurevitch, Asymptote

'Rao negotiates enough room to stretch and move in the semantic and sonic labyrinths of the Gita ... Rao's translation has much else to be celebrated and dwelt over.' - Kala Krishnan, The Hindu

'Rao's version of the Bhagavad Gita unpacks the original Sanskrit with a range of avant garde techniques-in prosody, diction, mise-en-page and lineation-rendering a new translation of the well-known philosophical text unlike any before it.' - The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry, ed. Jeremy Noel-Tod and Ian Hamilton

MANI RAO is the author of eleven poetry books including Sing to Me, Ghostmasters and Echolocation. Her books in translation from Sanskrit include Saundarya Lahari and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader. She did immersive fieldwork among tantric communities in Andhra–Telangana for Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity and Visionary Experience Today. Mani has an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Religious Studies. She lives in Bangalore and Puttaparthi.