Ww norton & co Mahabharata (WW Norton & Co)

The Mahabharata, originally composed some two thousand years ago, tells the story of a royal dynasty, descended from gods, whose feud over their kingdom results in a devastating war. An epic masterpiece of huge sweep and magisterial power, a hundred times more interesting than the Iliad and the Odyssey (Wendy Doniger), it 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 that includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization. This new English retelling, innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. It masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope."