About the Book

INTENSE AND INSIGHTFUL TAKES ON THE MEN WHO DRIVE THE ACTION IN THE MAHABHARATA, FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE WOMEN WHOSE LIVES WERE MOST IMPACTED BY THEM.
Arjuna is the hero of the Mahabharata—but is that how he appeared to Alli, the woman he stripped of dignity to please himself? Krishna is the supreme god and lover—but did he not turn a blind eye to injustice when it suited him? Yudhishtira is the embodiment of truth and humility—but did he have the courage to fight for his wife? Bhishma sacrificed his own needs for his father’s happiness—but what of the suffering and violence that was born of his sacrifice?
K. Srilata’s poems ask questions of the men in the Mahabharata, whose choices inflicted unimaginable grief and loss on their mothers, wives, lovers, children.

About the Author

K. Srilata is a poet, fiction writer, translator and academic. Her books include the critically acclaimed This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story (Westland) and six collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Three Women in a Single-Room House, was published by Sahitya Akademi. Srilata has also co-edited the anthologies The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, Short Fiction from South India, All the Worlds Between: A Collaborative Poetry Project Between India and Ireland and Lifescapes: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers from Tamilnadu. Her novel Table for Four was long-listed in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her published translations include the works of the Tamil writers Vatsala and Salma. Srilata’s poems have been widely anthologised and feature in collections such as The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry and A Poem a Day.
Srilata was awarded the Fulbright fellowship, the Charles Wallace fellowship and a foundation project by the India Foundation for the Arts. She has been writer in residence at the University of Stirling, Scotland, at the Yeonhui Art Space, Seoul and at Sangam House, India. As part of a Feminist Poets’ Summit project, Srilata was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Chennai in cooperation with the Chennai Photo Biennale to write poetry. Her poems have been translated into Tamil, Hindi and Korean.