The Palace of Illusions: Draupdi tells us the epic story.

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I don't remember much of what I did back when I was a child. Watching Mahabharata or Ramayana or Shree Krishna was certainly not it.

And now that I am all grown-up (or so says my driving license)  and I have Flipkart and Amazon in my life and a wonderful concept called word of mouth, I decided to read The Palace of Illusions in the hope that I will learn something about the great epic without being overwhelmed by the sheer size of it.

And The Palace of Illusions truly lived up to its expectations. The facts are obviously right. For who would dare change the Mahabharata? But the initial chapters on the childhood of the spirited Draupadi are a wonderful ad on. I just could not put the book down. Though the book might get boring for people who know the entire story of Mahabharata already, I would definitely suggest this book for the first half because its spirited, its juicy and it has never been written before. As for me, I was really slow towards the last chapters because I didn't want to keep this book down!

Thanks to this book, now I know who the five Pandavas are, what is their story and what led to the battle of Kurukshetra. And I got to know all this from the perspective of the woman who was married to five men at the same time and who was born to bring this world to that war!
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  1. I have read several versions of Mahabharata and still this book is unputdownable, mainly because all other versions tell you the story from the men’s PoV but this one tells you from the women’s PoV(even Kunti’s) who at the end of the day were the people around whom the whole narrative revolved. This book humanizes Draupadi for us. In the similar genre you must read Jaya which is a very neutral analysis of Mahabharata and also if you read hindi literature, then a MUST Read is Mrityunjaya which is the story of Karna from his childhood. I can assure you that Mrityunjaya will become one of your all time favorites. :)

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