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    The Pregnant King: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Pregnant King: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Pregnant King: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Pregnant King: A Novel

    Written by Devdutt Pattanaik

    Narrated by Suyash Mohan

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "‘I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’"

    Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story. It is also the story of his mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; of young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; of Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; of Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; of Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and of Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others.

    Building on Hinduism’s rich and complex mythology — but driven by a very contemporary sensibility — Devdutt Pattanaik creates a lush and fecund work of fiction in which the lines are continually blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Confronted with such fluidity the listener is drawn into Yuvanashva’s struggle to be fair to all — those here, those there, and all those in between.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 25, 2019
    ISBN9780143500209
    Unavailable
    The Pregnant King: A Novel
    Author

    Devdutt Pattanaik

    A medical doctor by training, Devdutt Pattanaik moved away from clinical practice to nurture his passion for mythology. His unorthodox approach is evident in his books, which include introductions to Shiva and Vishnu and The Goddess in India. He lives in Mumbai, India, where he works as a health communicator and writes and lectures on Hindu narratives, art, rituals, and philosophy.

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