In Palace of Illusions, Chitra Divakaruni has taken a feminist technique very popular in the West - that is, the reimagining of ancient stories with an eye towards the motivations of the women - and applied it to the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic whose importance is rivaled only by the Ramayana.

I read this book on my flight back from India, which was an interesting way to say goodbye to the country. In part I wanted to learn a bit about the original story - I’m pretty sure I cold skipped that lecture when I took Hinduism 101 in college - and in part I wanted to see what a book which I had come to think of as “India’s answer to The Red Tent” would look like.

As it turns out - the story is vastly complex. Though Divakaruni tries her best to simplify the epic, the sheer size of the cast of characters, to say nothing of the numerous subplots and convoluted political machinations, makes it nearly impossible to keep up, as someone who’s not already familiar with the story. I think her primary audience is meant to be Hindu readers who would have grown up with the Mahabharata and therefore don’t really need much in the way of summary - at numerous points along the way she uses phrases like, “everything that happened later”, without any more detail than that. That’s certainly fine - I can appreciate that I’m not the primary audience - but it is a worthwhile note for other readers: if you don’t already know the original story, this book can be quite difficult to read.

Turning to Divakaruni’s primary goal, which is to explore the motivations and feelings of Draupadi throughout the story - I think the book was a tremendous success. While I’m not too familiar with the traditional interpretation of this character, I gather that she’s not meant to be very sympathetic in the original text, and is indeed widely blamed for calamitous events. Divakaruni turns that idea on its head, instead painting Draupadi as the product of her environment and a woman doing her best to thrive in a world not meant for her. In this sense the story reads very similarly to The Red Tent, which is its closest Western analogue to my knowledge.

The book is shot through with mystical events and it’s consequently brimming with language that I find a little on the irritating side - imprecise language that masquerades (not very well) as clever coyness. It reminded me, and not pleasantly, of Paulo Coelho’s writing. I can’t say I enjoyed that very much, but I’ll admit it’s an aesthetic taste on my part.

On the whole - I’m glad I picked up this book. I found it very educational and I think Divakaruni easily achieved her very laudable goal. I hope that she inspires other acts of feminist deconstruction, as I think the need is vast. For readers unfamiliar with the Mahabharata, I’d recommend reading up on the original text before diving in to this one.