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Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling Paperback – February 22, 2016

by Carole Satyamurti (Author), Vinay Dharwadker (Afterword), Wendy Doniger (Foreword)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 133 ratings
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"Astonishing…[Satyamurti’s Mahabharata] brings [the] past alive…as though it were a novel in finely crafted verse." ―Vinay Dharwadker

Originally composed approximately two thousand years ago, the Mahabharata tells the story of a royal dynasty, descended from gods, whose feud over their kingdom results in a devastating war. But it contains much more than conflict. An epic masterpiece of huge sweep and magisterial power, “a hundred times more interesting” than the Iliad and the Odyssey, writes Wendy Doniger in the introduction, the Mahabharata is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion, and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love, and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization.

Innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, Carole Satyamurti’s English retelling covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. This new version masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope.

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  1. Print length
    928 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    February 22, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.6 x 8.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393352498
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393352498
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A remarkable achievement."
― The New Statesman

"An exquisitely crafted reminder of the power of the Mahabharata: how riveting a read it is, and how relevant it remains to our times."
― Manil Suri

"A gift to be grateful for. It gives us, as all poetry should, access into a world we did not know or did not know well enough and which henceforth we will visit again and again."
― David Constantine

"A spellbinding reading experience and a magisterial achievement."
― Eva Hoffman

"Like the Iliad, the Mahabharata has everything: love, war, family, gods, all the beauty and horror of life. I hope Carole Satyamurti’s compelling version will introduce this marvelous epic, still largely unknown in the west, to a whole generation of new readers."
― Katha Pollitt

"A kind of miracle: a talented English poet has brought alive in blank verse an ancient Sanskrit epic for the contemporary ear and in a language that does not draw attention to itself but captures the weft and warp of the original thrilling tale, including its moral complexity."
― Gurcharan Das

"[A] bold and masterful retelling…Satyamurti’s version flows with exhilarating clarity and momentum."
― Donna Seaman, Booklist

About the Author

Carol Satyamurti was a poet and social scientist. She published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Countdown. Her work has been widely anthologized and won numerous awards, including first prize in the National Poetry Competition, 1986, and a Cholmondeley Award in 2000. Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling, of which this volume is an abridgment, won the inaugural Roehampton Poetry Prize in 2015.

Wendy Doniger (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. She first trained as a dancer under George Balanchine and Martha Graham and then went on to complete two doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian Studies (from Harvard and Oxford). She has taught at Harvard, Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984 she was elected president of the American Academy of Religion, in 1989 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1996 a member of the American Philosophical Society, and in 1997 president of the Association for Asian Studies. She has been awarded seven honorary degrees, and her book The Hindus: An Alternative History was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Vinay Dharwadker (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is the author of Cosmopolitan Geographies: New Locations in Literature and Culture (2001) and a book of poetry, Sunday at the Lodi Gardens: Poems (1994). He is the editor of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994) and The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan (1999), and the translator of a collection of Kabir’s work called Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs (2003).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (February 22, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 928 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393352498
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393352498
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.6 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 133 ratings

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Carole Satyamurti

Carole Satyamurti

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
133 global ratings
The book itself is exactly what I was hoping it would be
5 Stars
The book itself is exactly what I was hoping it would be
There is nothing wrong with the product in and of itself as a book. Unfortunately, the book was damaged during delivery. I will likely request a replacement, as the bent cover actually gets in the way of reading the book.
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Top reviews from the United States

Matthew Rapaport
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful telling of a marvelous tale!
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2020
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How to review this volume? Dr. Satyamurti is not the author, the story goes back over two thousand years. Nor is she the translator, for she created it out of a much earlier and "definitive" English Translation of the mid twentieth century. She is, however the volume's arranger and curator, and for this labor of love she deserves a big hand! I have not read any other version of this tale, although forty years ago I read a version of the Bhagavad Gita, which it turns out is extracted from the central part of the Mahabharata.

The story brings to mind the ancient epic poems of the Western tradition, the Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf. The subjects are similar, war, human frailty, the role of destiny, prophecy, providence. In the Western works, the gods intrude relatively rarely. The world of the Mahabharata is lived almost between Earth and the realms (yes more than one) of the gods. In a way, the whole story is about how even humans who are literally the products (children) of humans and gods (mothers always being human and therefore stuck with the consequences) end up being all too human! Even super powers, it seems, cannot always overcome greed, envy, anger, duplicity, or even stupidity.

Dr. Satyamurti took that "definitive translation" of some hundred-thousand lines, and reduced it to about twenty-thousand but the story never feels partial. In addition, she did it all in marvelously rhythmic blank verse, switching effortlessly between that and prose when stories are being told within the story or the narration telescopes out from the tale to its telling. Doing this consistently throughout as she does was, I can see, a lot of work. Bravo to Dr. Satyamurti for a delightful poetic read and a powerful reminder that tragedy and disaster brought on by human malfeasance is not new in the world.
3 people found this helpful
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Akhilesh Pillalamarri
5.0 out of 5 stars The Version of the Mahabharata Everyone Should Get
Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2017
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This is the version of the Mahabharata that I would recommend to those not previously familiar with it, or for those who want a nice, poetic version of the epic. The Mahabharata itself is, in translation, thousands of pages long, and contains within it several entire treatises and other works including the Bhagavad Gita, elaborations on governance, and an abridged Ramayana. It is therefore necessary for an single volume version of the Mahabharata to be an abridgment, adaptation, or some sort of retelling. I am particularly fond of Devdutt Pattanaik's Jaya, but that book is more conducive to those who are already familiar with the epic, because it recounts several regional and folk versions of the story and works on the assumption that the reader is familiar with basic Hindu concepts.

Carole Satyamurti's version of the Mahabharata is especially notable because it preserves the structure of the original epic. It is closer to an abridgment than an adaptation, and for the most part keeps the most important parts of the original content without extrapolations or changes. The content itself is poetically worded in an aesthetically pleasing manner that seeks to capture the original intent without cleaving too close to an exact word for word equivalence of the original Sanskrit; Satyamurti is a poet and not a translator. She is a great poet, and this is a beautiful and lively poem.

I especially appreciate the effort she took to retain the structure of the original, keeping large parts of treatises on philosophical and political questions wedged between the main plot. The Mahabharata itself is so long because of this material. Most people familiar with the Mahabharata, Indian or non-Indian, are mostly familiar with the main story, the struggle between the Pandavas and Kauravas, and the workings of Krishna. This edition, however, includes all that along with dialogues about topics relevant to the human condition that could relevant to people in the present. A final note: yes, this is a secularized version of the epic, intended to be read mostly for its literary and philosophical merits rather than its religious content, in the same way most people today read the Iliad without faith in the deities therein. This could be problematic for some, but there are literally hundreds of versions of the Mahabharata that take a more pious note, and since this version is aimed mostly at Western audiences, this really isn't an issue. In many ways, by taking a more objective, philosophical, and less reverent stance (that need not be exclusive with belief), this version of the epic does it great justice by allowing it to be seen in a new, more universal and contemplative light, as a meditation on the themes of human existence.
10 people found this helpful
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Anon
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2021
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Very readable version of this classic story. Though it looks like lots of pages it’s easily read.
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Linda kangas
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful edition.
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2021
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She has done a great job with translating the material and making it easy to read and engaging.
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N. Turner
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2020
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Seeing Peter Brook’s stage production inspired wanting to learn more and this is an excellent read. A mythology of epic impact.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Satyamurti did not read the original Sanskrit text her compilation of the book from various translations written in archaic Engl
Reviewed in Canada on September 12, 2016
Verified Purchase
A pleasure to read the Mahabharata in modern verse. Although, Satyamurti did not read the original Sanskrit text her compilation of the book from various translations written in archaic English is excellent.
2 people found this helpful
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Oslo
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent version of the Mahabharata
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2016
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An excellent version of the Mahabharata. This new rendition in English, based on earlier translations of the ancient work, is written in very accessible blank verse. Despite being 'classical' it's not in the least stuffy, and at one level is simply an action-packed story that is here presented in an enjoyable, easy-to-read form. The discussions contained in the forward and afterword add to the pleasure.
6 people found this helpful
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Caliban
5.0 out of 5 stars Für alle, die bisher einen Bogen um das Mahabharata gemacht haben!
Reviewed in Germany on June 19, 2015
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Um das Mahabharata hatte ich bisher immer einen Bogen gemacht. Ich beherrsche Sanskrit einigermaßen (bis zum Schwierigkeitsgrad des Meghaduta) und liebe das Ramayana. Die Geschichte um die fünf Pandavas erschien mir jedoch stets zu verworren und wegen der zahlreichen Einspengsel nicht spannend genug. Vor allem sind die klassischen deutschen Übersetzungen häufig nicht so mutig, die Spreu vom Weizen zu trennen. Sie überwältigen den Leser mit einer Fülle ihm unbekannter Orts- und Götternamen, Heldenepitheten und religiösen Fachbezeichnungen, die anstrengen, aber nicht interessant sind.
Hier findet sich eine Nacherzählung in Prosa, die dies alles weglässt. Denn bei allem Umfang kommt das bibliophil schön gestaltete Buch bei weitem nicht auf die berühmten 800.000 Wörter des Originals! Dafür bringt es aber das menschlich Packende der Originalgeschichte deutlich zum Vorschein und bereitet jedem Leser Freude, der einer berührenden Geschichte in fantastischer Einkleidung etwas abgewinnen kann. Denn bei aller Exotik werden hier auch für einen anspruchsvollen (erwachsenen) Leser packende Charakterportraits entworfen. Mir ist etwa haften geblieben, wie der blinde König Dhritarashtrah geschildert wird, als er vom Mordanschlag seines Sohnes auf die Pandavas hört: Äußerlich ist er empört, innerlich hätte er sich einen Erfolg des Anschlags gewünscht. Der Dichter vergleicht die Seele des Königs mit einem tiefen Bergsee in der Sommerhitze: Die Oberfläche erscheint warm und angenehm, aber auf dem Grund herrscht Eiseskälte! Packend ist auch die Geschichte des Lehrers der Pandavas Drona: Einen jugendlichen Bogenschützen aus einer niederen Kaste unterrichtet er nicht und weist ihn entsprechend ab. Dieser baut sich darauf eine Drona-Puppe und übt allein, und zwar so lange, bis er den Drona-Schüler Arjuna mit seinen Fähigkeiten übertrumpft. Als er eines Tages stolz Drona seine Künste vorzeigt und ihm verkündet, diese habe er ihm – Drona – zu verdanken, verlangt letzterer ein Entgelt: Den Daumen des jungen Schützen! Lebensnah auch die Episode, in der Drona, in Armut geraten, seinen alten Jugendfreund Drupadi besucht, dieser ihn aber mit der Bemerkung kalt von sich weist, die alten Zeiten seien vorbei. Die Wut und Rache wird darauf Dronas zentrale Triebfeder bis zur Schlacht von Kurukshetra. Liest man diesen Text fällt auch auf, dass die eine oder andere Passage am Anfang auf die Bhagavd Gita verweist: Wenn etwa Arjuna den Bogen spannt und den Pfeil loslassen muss so wie später die Früchte seines Handelns, seine Werke eben, wird das Karma Yoga sehr frühzeitig als Gedanke am Beispiel des Pfeiles vorbereitet. Gerade wenn der Text diesen Bezug explizit herstellt, möchte man an der These zweifeln, dass die Bhagavad Gita nur ein Einschub in das Mahabharata ist.
Sei’s drum! Das vorliegende Buch liest sich wie ein Kriminalroman, ist wirklich an keiner Stelle langweilig oder redundant, wie man dies bei Epen dieser Art erwarten würde, sondern wartet mit einer Fülle gut erzählter Geschichten und packender Charakterportraits auf. Wenn Sie es (noch) einmal mit dem Mahabharata versuchen wollen, sollten Sie diesen erstklassigen Einstieg wählen!
4 people found this helpful
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Mrs W R Marshall
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a beautifully produced book and excellent re-telling of the tale
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 13, 2016
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It's a beautifully produced book and excellent re-telling of the tale. So much work has gone into the writing by Carole Satyamurti in order to make this such and exciting book to read.
2 people found this helpful
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Neil Stalport
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Canada on January 16, 2016
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Good translation
One person found this helpful
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