"What a marvel this book is. In taut, lyrical prose shot through with moments of wry humor, Jocelyn Davis brings ancient India to life so thoroughly that the gulf between past and present disappears we feel as if she is telling our own story. Riveting and deeply moving, The Age of Kali is the work of an immensely gifted novelist." —Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones , Lili , and Dogs "To lovers of the Indian epics, this book is a devious, heretical topsy-turvying of the Mahabharata; to Hindu fundamentalists, dangerous, blasphemous, a book to be burnt; to the general reader, a brilliant, enthralling, complex fantasy that will linger in your mind long after you have finished it." —Krishnan Venkatesh, author of Do You Know Who You Are? Reading the Buddha’s Discourses The Mahabharata, often called “India’s Iliad,” tells of several generations of the royal family of their ambitions, loves, moral dilemmas, and battles for a kingdom. As tradition has it, the heroes are the five Pandava brothers and their shared wife, Draupadi; the villain is their power-mad cousin, Duryodhana. But what if tradition got it wrong? What if Duryodhana, despite his flaws, were the real hero—with a passionate heart buried under his emotional and physical scars—and the supposedly noble Pandavas were the evil ones? What if Draupadi and the many other women of the tale were rebels behind the scenes? And what if, thanks to a young girl who ferreted out the family secrets and kept them hidden for years, the truth could at last be told? Sweeping, fast-paced, and packed with gripping characters, THE AGE OF KALI turns a famous work of world literature inside out, bringing forth voices long silenced. In the end, three questions Who won? Who lost? And who was to blame?

EXCERPT

"The high priest is constantly reminding us of what we owe the Pandavas for saving the world from my father … my father, the evil Duryodhana, who instigated the great war in which thousands died and the Kuru line was nearly destroyed, all because he would not share power with his five noble cousins. Or so the story goes …

Yes of course I know the story, Nephew, everyone knows the story. It goes like Prince Duryodhana envied his cousins the Pandavas starting when they were all boys together. When they grew up, Duryodhana plotted to have them exiled on a trumped-up charge. Duryodhana lusted after the Princess Draupadi and couldn’t bear to see her choose another; he brooded on her rejection for years, then at the great dice match took his revenge. When the Pandavas claimed their rightful portion of the kingdom, he went to war with them. Finally, in a blind fury at his side’s defeat he did the unthinkable, thereby ushering in the Kali this present age, the Age of Kali, polluted by sickness and crime and vice.

Yet the bards also say he went straight to paradise when he died. How could that be, Janamejaya, if he were evil?"