ASURA - Tale of the Vanquished

Anand Neelakantan

Summary

The epic tale of victory and defeat… The story of the Ramayana had been told innumerable times. The enthralling story of Rama, the incarnation of God, who slew Ravana, the evil demon of darkness, is known to every Indian. And in the pages of history, as always, it is the version told by the victors, that lives on. The voice of the vanquished remains lost in silence. But what if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana had never been told. Asura is the epic tale of the vanquished Asura people, a story that has been cherished by the oppressed outcastes of India for 3000 years. Until now, no Asura has dared to tell the tale. But perhaps the time has come for the dead and the defeated to speak. “For thousands of years, I have been vilified and my death is celebrated year after year in every corner of India. Why? Was it because I challenged the Gods for the sake of my daughter? Was it because I freed a race from the yoke of caste-based Deva rule? You have heard the victor’s tale, the Ramayana. Now hear the Ravanayana, for I am Ravana, the Asura, and my story is the tale of the vanquished.” “I am a non-entity – invisible, powerless and negligible. No epics will ever be written about me. I have suffered both Ravana and Rama – the hero and the villain or the villain and the hero. When the stories of great men are told, my voice maybe too feeble to be heard. Yet, spare me a moment and hear my story, for I am Bhadra, the Asura, and my life is the tale of the loser.” The ancient Asura empire lay shattered into many warring petty kingdoms reeling under the heel of the Devas. In desperation, the Asuras look up to a young saviour – Ravana. Believing that a better world awaits them under Ravana, common men like Bhadra decide to follow the young leader. With a will of iron and a fiery ambition to succeed, Ravana leads his people from victory to victory and carves out a vast empire from the Devas. But even when Ravana succeeds spectacularly, the poor Asuras find that nothing much has changed for them. It is when that Ravana, by one action, changes the history of the world.

Available since: 04/01/2012.

Contemporary Fiction

Other books that might interest you

The Witch of Exmoor

Drabble Margaret

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year: “Part social satire, part thriller, and entirely clever” (Elle).   It is a midsummer’s evening in the English countryside, and the three grown Palmer children are coming to the end of an enjoyable meal in the company of their partners and offspring. From this pleasant vantage point they play a dinner-party game: What kind of society would you be willing to accept if you didn’t know your place in it? But the abstract question of justice, like all their family conversations, is eventually brought back to the more pressing problem of their eccentric mother, Frieda, the famous writer, who has abandoned them and her old life, and gone to live alone in Exmoor.   Frieda has always been a powerful and puzzling figure, a monster mother with a mysterious past. What is she plotting against them now? Has some inconvenient form of political correctness led her to favor her enchanting half-Guyanese grandson? What will she do with her money? Is she really writing her memoirs? And why has she disappeared? Has the dark spirit of Exmoor finally driven her mad?  The Witch of Exmoor brilliantly interweaves high comedy and personal tragedy, unraveling the story of a family whose comfortable, rational lives, both public and private, are about to be violently disrupted by a succession of sinister, messy events. “Leisurely and mischievous,” it is a dazzling, wickedly gothic tale of a British matriarch, her three grasping children, and the perils of self-absorption (The New Yorker).   “As meticulous as Jane Austen, as deadly as Evelyn Waugh.” —Los Angeles Times

Show book

The Lazarus Bell – Illaun Bowe...

Patrick Dunne

A gruesome summer crimewave in the Boyne Valley complete with ritual murders and a mysterious plague-bringing Madonna – intrepid archaeologist Illaun Bowe is back in Irish king of crime Patrick Dunne's spine-tingling The Lazarus Bell!

'It's not what you think,' he rasped, his tongue dry and clicking inside his mouth. A look of fear had invaded his eyes. I came as close as I dared. His voice dropped to a barely detectable whisper. 'It's worse … far worse.'

A beautiful carved wooden Madonna, sealed tightly into a lead coffin, is discovered in a plague graveyard in the sleepy village of Castleboyne in Ireland – a fascinating but routine call-out for archaeologist Illaun Bowe.

That is, until they take the coffin out of the ground and a black liquid oozes out from the casing, accidentally spilling over one of the workers. Within 24 hours, his skin breaks out in pus-filled lesions, and his organs fail, one by one …

Soon hysteria breaks out in Castleboyne, with a quarantine imposed on the town by the Department of Health and nasty tabloid speculation that the disease has been brought to the area by the new immigrant population. Illaun has to get to the bottom of what was in the coffin to reassure herself that a deadly disease hasn't been unleashed upon the community because of her carelessness. Then a young boy is brought into the hospital, with the same symptoms as Terry …

As the summer temperatures soar, the hysteria is fuelled by the finding of a torso floating in the River Boyne, an African woman killed for ritual purposes. Meanwhile, someone is making it dangerously clear to Illaun that they want that statue …

Dive into The Lazarus Bell, another heart-stopping macabre thriller from internationally bestselling author Patrick Dunne. Full of twists, turns and uncovered conspiracies, join archaeologist Illaun Bowe in this unpredictable, atmospheric novel guaranteed to give you goosebumps.

Who knew archaeology could be so interesting – and dangerous?

Praise for Patrick Dunne

Dunne may be the next big thing in the thriller field out of Ireland.
Irish Independent

[Patrick Dunne], in his multi-layered novels, explores the darker recesses of the human psyche where his plots are powered by the mysterious and the macabre and include strange happenings in such places as 'plague pits' and cemeteries.
The Meath Chronicle

A gripping thriller
Books Ireland

… attractively-drawn heroine Illaun Bowe neatly combines archaeology, medieval history and current sociological tensions in Ireland in an absorbing read.
Irish Independent

Show book

A Hard Death - A Novel

Jonathan Hayes

Forensic pathologist Edward Jenner survived the horrific ordeal of the Inquisitor serial slayings in New York, but not the political fallout. With his state medical license suspended, he hopes to repair his shattered life while working as a medical examiner in Douglas County, Florida. But evil is not confined to big cities alone.Two corpses pulled from a sunken car—followed by the grisly discovery of four more bodies hanging in the Everglades—are evidence of an insidious rot infecting this quiet coastal resort community. Suddenly Jenner's investigation is turning up grim traces of a nightmarish conspiracy—and with no one to trust and nowhere to turn, his only hope of survival is to walk away . . . something Jenner could never do.

Show book

Bloodborn

Kathryn Fox

“Kathryn Fox has created a forensic physician who readers of Patricia Cornwell will adore.” —James PattersonDr. Anya Crichton, the protagonist of Kathryn Fox’s critically acclaimed thrillers Without Consent and Malicious Intent returns in Bloodborn, a spellbinding new masterwork of crime fiction that fans of C.S.I. and Bones will adore. New York Times bestseller Kathy Reichs raves, “Like Fox, her creator, Anya Crichton is a force of nature. Bloodborn is a medical thriller that grips from first page to last.” Gritty and powerful, Bloodborn plunges Anya into her most explosive and dangerous investigation of all, as she confronts a seemingly untouchable family of criminals responsible for a series of savage and shocking murders.

Show book

Dirty Little War - A Crime Novel

Dietrich Kalteis

For readers of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos, a tense crime novel set in mob-filled Chicago during the 1920s Prohibition
		 
It’s 1920 and the start of Prohibition. Circumstances beyond his control find a young man, Huckabee Waller, involved in the death of a gangster in his hometown of New Orleans. Fearing repercussions from the gangster’s associates, Huck hops a northbound freight and heads for the promise of Chicago.
		 
Expecting to make an honest living, he’s surprised to find that he’s arrived at the epicenter of crime, corruption, and commerce. Unable to find legitimate work, he gets mixed up in bare-knuckle fights run by the notorious North Side Gang. Reviving his skills as a club fighter, Huck quickly becomes a crowd favorite and makes enough to get by. When it becomes apparent to him that the gang is also heavily involved in running illegal whiskey, a very profitable enterprise, he’s drawn into their world by the desire for more.
		 
As Huck starts running booze across the Canadian border for the North Side Gang and gets tangled up in Chicago’s taxi wars, tensions between them and the South Side Gang flare up, and soon he’s in the crosshairs of enforcer Al Capone. The smart thing to do would be to get out of Chicago — fast — that is if the life he wants to leave behind doesn’t kill him first.

Show book

Mosquitoes

William Faulkner

One of Faulkner’s most controversial novels!      A lesser-known but compelling novel from the author of Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury.      Have you ever wondered what speaks to the tortured soul of an artist? What would it be like to be stuck on a yacht with only the musings of the world and a group of artists as your company?      In the heat of the late Louisiana summer, Faulkner brings us a story of artistry that examines the thoughts and actions of Southern bohemians who have nothing to interrupt them but the hum and fire of the mosquitoes that surround them. “Faulkner’s message is clear: We are the mosquitoes, and the mosquitoes are us.”—Rein Fartel, “Twentieth Century Millennial: Revisiting Faulkner’s Mosquitoes.”       With a foreword by Carl Rollyson, a renowned biographer of Faulkner and other eminent authors, this fine new edition works to highlight the “Louisiana Faulkner,” the Faulkner before fame, and his thoughts on the lives of Southern artists.

Show book