"Growing from an oral tradition of ballads based on historic events in India, the Mahabharata was passed down and extended through the centuries, becoming the longest poem ever written. R. K. Narayan provides a superb rendition in an abbreviated and elegant retelling of this great epic."

Having never read the unabridged Mahabharata (which runs to about 100,000 stanzas or roughly 8x the length of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined - making it one of the longest written compositions in the world, not to mention making it unlikely that i'll ever get around to reading it) it is difficult to adequately review an abridged version. However, I can make a few comments.

Narayan renders this extensive work into a brief 179 pages, an amazing feat, and produces a very well written and entertaining story. This comes at a cost, however, as many of the more esoteric dialogs have been removed leaving the fundamental story and plot, without much of the philosophical ideas that make it a rich religious text. ( )

"Growing from an oral tradition of ballads based on historic events in India, the Mahabharata was passed down and extended through the centuries, becoming the longest poem ever written. R. K. Narayan provides a superb rendition in an abbreviated and elegant retelling of this great epic."

The Mahabharata is an account of the heroes and their families of ancient India, much in the same spirit as The Iliad. I kinda liked it. I had lots of trouble with the names, though, unable sometimes to keep sorted in my mind who was who, who was related to who. But the tales of those larger than life people, reminiscent in some ways of the stories of Odysseus and Achilles and others, was always interesting. I'll never read it again and will probably never have occasion to refer to it, but I'm glad I read it. ( )