Until the Lions

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… show more.

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… show more.