SHAKUNTALA The Woman Wronged

by

  1. ISBN: 978-81-291-3746-3
  2. Pages: 296 pages
  3. Date: September 2015

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The story of Shakuntala is well known—her upbringing in the ashram, her meeting with Dushyant, their marriage and subsequent separation due to a curse and their final joyous reunion. What is not so well known, however, is that the gentle, lovelorn Shakuntala immortalized by Kalidasa is very different from the original Shakuntala of the Mahabharata—a strong, fiery woman who stood up for her rights when she was spurned by her beloved.
In this thoughtful retelling of the story of Shakuntala, Utkarsh Patel brings to the fore the original heroine, the bold and beautiful daughter of Menaka and Vishwamitra who fights to get herself and her son the recognition they deserve. She does not surrender to anyone, not even the king of Hastinapur. Retold to suit the modern-day context, Shakuntala: The Woman Wronged is a must-read to understand one of the most powerful yet underrated female characters of the Mahabharata.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Utkarsh Patel is a corporate-professional-turned-mythologist, and now an author. He is a professor of Comparative Mythology at the Mumbai University and has qualifications in Indian and World Mythology. He is a founder-member of the Talking Myth Project (http://www.talkingmyths.com), an attempt to create an online repository of age-old stories lost in this modern world. Utkarsh blogs at www.utkarshspeak.blogspot.in and is a regular speaker at various forums. Follow him on Twitter @utkarshmp. He can also be reached at utkarshmp@yahoo.com