Until the Lions
Book description
The title of this book comes from the African proverb - "until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter". In this poetic reimagining, Nair writes, for the first time, the history of the women in the Mahabharata, the longest poem ever…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Until the Lions as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
As a writer of feminist myths, Kartika Nair’s exquisite poetic retelling of the Mahabharata from the women’s perspective felt like it was written for me. The title is from the African writer Chinua Achebe’s words, "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." Using formal poetry, free verse, and prose, Nair has created a palimpsest of the great Indian epic of kingship and warring dynasties which is several times the length of The Iliad and The Odyssey combined. Here the mothers, wives, sisters, and lovers of the protagonists tell their…
From Gita's list on myths beyond the Greco-Roman Canon.
I noted above that the Sanskrit Mahabharata is known as the longest poem in the world, so it shouldn’t come as any shock that the Mahabharata tradition is filled with a ginormous cast of characters. One of the reasons why I love Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata is because Karthika Naïr uses this beautiful collection of poems to give voices to characters whose voices are only briefly or never heard in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. Many of these characters are women. They include Hidimbi (a demoness who marries the second-eldest Pandava brother Bhima), Ulupi (a snake princess who…
From Sohini's list on Mahabharata poems, plays, and novels.
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