However Venmurasu differs in that each novel in the series has its own aesthetic, narrative form and vision. Venmurasu is a modern literary text, a novel series or roman fleuve like Romain Rolland's Jean Cristophe or Emilie Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart. It refashions the original with artistic purpose to create a greater whole, a parallel, modern epic. Broadly, what Venmurasu does to the Mbh is what Shakespeare did with the story of Donwald to create Macbeth, or what Wagner did with the Norse myths to create the Ring cycle. The grandeur and artistic merit that sets this work apart stems from these aspects. In its scope, its formal aesthetics, and its vision. Venmurasu is different from all these previous attempts in multiple ways. Or they are subversions of the original tales, but mostly again limited to one character or perspective, without sufficient space to allow the reader to live and dream. They sacrifice breadth in favour of depth Or they are serials with a mostly flat narrative structure, that adheres to the plot of the original epic. However, most of the stand-alone novels in this list present the epic from the view of one character (Randamoozham, Yagnaseni) or one sub-story (Yayati) or one perspective (Yuganta). (These are just the ones I've read in some form btw). Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel sets the characters in the context of India's freedom struggle. Off the top of my head - Mahasasmar (Narendra Kohli, Hindi), Parva (SL Bhyrappa, Kannada), Randamoozham (MT Vasudevan Nair, Malayalam), Yagnaseni (Pratibha Ray, Hindi), Yuganta (Iravati Karve, Marathi), Yayati (VS Khandekar, Marathi), Nithyakanni (MV Venkatram,Tamil) and additionally numerous serialisations and novelisations in English - Ashok Banker, Ramesh Menon, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Kamala Subramaniam, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan etc. And indeed, narratives in the Mahabharatha (Mbh) have been novelised in literary form in many Indian languages over the past century. Needless to say, it has all the inherent complexity that's just ripe material for a novel. It includes genealogies, mythologies, moral texts. But it's also a family saga, an internecine bloodbath between cousins an investigation of dharma, righteousness a philosophical text a devotional text. in India, a period that held the seeds for the subsequent emergence of the Nandas and Mauryas and the rise of Buddhism.

It depicts a time of great social, political and moral transition. For non-Indian readers, it's a living story still narrated in oral and art forms, that's centres on an Iron-age civil war in the Indo-gangetic plain. It is based on the Indian epic, the Vyasa-Mahabharatha. Venmurasu is written entirely in Tamil, a classical language of antiquity like Latin or Sanskrit, with a rich literary tradition, but still spoken today. The last chapter of the last novel was published last night.

The author serialised the novels, a chapter a day, since 2014. 26 separate standard fiction length novels, over 25000 pages in print, written over roughly 6.5 years. Tamil writer Jeyamohan, whom I've translated in the past, has finished writing his novel series titled 'Venmurasu' (The White Drum). Here's a review from a Twitter ID I follow: We do not have any official/unofficial Telegram/Discord/IRC channels or groups approved by the mods. No pirated stuff ( while we are ambivalent on the topic of piracy, its better to restrict links on ths sub itself) No promotional content (please message the mods incase you want to promote something) Feel free to talk about all things related to books and reading in general.Ĭame across a book or a related article and want to share it and exchange views about it? Read a book recently and itching to discuss it? Picked up some books and want to show off your haul? Want to review a book, or catch up on reviews online? Just want a place for like-minded people who are as crazy about books as you are? This is the place for you! Feel free to partcipate! We dont restrict ourselves to Indian authors though. We are a small community of book lovers who like to talk about books.

Jayamohan script writer