Synopsis
“Steeped in the tradition of the Indian epic, yet modern and vastly entertaining.”—The Times (London)
About Alice Albinia
See more books from this AuthorHe summarizes the original epic while explaining how its composer Vyasa, Vyasa’s second wife Meera, the slave girl Leela whom Vyasa impregnated and a slew of secondary characters have reappeared through the ages, reliving the original story of egotism, sexual conquest and intrigue, as well as lov...
Jan 09 2012 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelWhen Meera first began dating Vyasa, her professor, she convinced Leela to relinquish her bourgeois mores and sleep with him too, and Leela's tryst shattered the siblings' relationship.
Jul 01 2011 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelAlice Albinia's fascinating travelogue, Empires of the Indus, traversed more than two thousand miles of riverbank and several milennia of south Asian history.
Feb 16 2012 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelGanesh, elephant-headed god, scribe/author of the Mahabharata, sometime narrator of Leela’s Book tells us Leela’s soul has been connected to the others’ through numerous reincarnations.
May 21 2012 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelThe frame of Leela’s Book is this relationship: in Albinia’s book, Ganesha takes issue with Vyasa’s claims of authorship and credits himself with a larger role in the composition of the epic, while the modern-day Vyasa makes it the subject of his scholarship to deny Ganesha’s existence and role i...
Jun 26 2011 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelAt the wedding, while the wedding party sits on a dais, the sister of the groom boldly darts under a table and has sex with a relative stranger, bragging about being “polyandrous, like Draupadi in the ‘Mahabharata.’” Albinia writes like a cross between Zadie Smith and Gabriel Garcia Márquez, crea...
Mar 08 2012 | Read Full Review of Leela's Book: A NovelAn aggregated and normalized score based on 5 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes