I daylight as a lawyer, moonlight as a stand-up comic and gaslight as a storyteller. A connoisseur of mythology and momos, I have often wondered how our ancient tales might have unfolded if narrated from women’s perspectives - a curiosity kindled since I listened to my grandmother’s grievances even as she regaled me with these stories. In the same breadth, I could not help but see how harmful and reductionist “evil” labels can be especially when history is chronicled only by victors. It is this quest of humanizing the vanquished and the vilified while honouring the essence of a timeless epic that led me to play a medieval matchmaker by wedding Indian Lore to Italian Renaissance.
Imagine a feast where the cozy brutality of A Game of Thrones is stir-fried with the healthy relationships of Gone Girl on a pan of Ancient India and seasoned with a dash of mystic magic based on mandalas, chakras, and yoga.
In this dark reimagination of the mythological poem of Mahabharata (the world’s oldest and longest epic poem), you won’t find damsels in distress but damsels who cause distress. A pirate princess with no moral conscience, a valiant swordswoman with a fickle husband, an assassin’s apprentice pretending to be a boy, an oracle…for these badass women, battles are as common as big fat weddings, murder trials are the new royal entertainment, and chaos is the head chef in the kitchen of destiny. Hope they treat you with courtesy and cruelty.
While Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles is just a beautiful, lyrical tale about one of the greatest heroes across ages, Circe was revolutionary in the way it reclaimed a ‘villain’.
I am sure I wasn’t the only one who thought Circe would be mostly about Odysseus but from a woman’s POV. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized Circe was less a retelling more an origin story of the griefs and triumphs of this immortal goddess/nymph.
It humanized her trials on her exile to the isle of Aiaia. Her character arc from a spurned woman to an earth witch inspired me to write about footnote female characters from our myths. I completely dug the Poison Ivy vibes I got from Circe.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…
A Thousand Ships is a mythological reimagining not from the POV of conquerors of Troy but from the POV of the kidnapped, the enslaved, and the abused. In short, women. And of course, the goddesses who started it all.
It is an exploration of the voice of women in Greek Mythos who have so far just worked as plot devices in the OG story but are now given emotions and motivations. To see, the two sides of the war from Hecuba (Queen of Troy) and Clytemnestra (wife of Agamemnon)’s POV broadened my horizon of Troy from the battlefield to their homes.
Though my personal favourite has to be the Chandler-like sarcasm in the letters of the sharp-tongued Penelope to her sharp-witted husband, Odysseus.
In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective, for fans of Madeline Miller and Pat Barker.
This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all . . .
In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.
From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands…
Talking about Penelope brings me to the Penelopiad. This book could have been more accurately called the Trial of Odysseus.
Odysseus here feels like an ancient Andrew Tate. Picture the ancient soap opera: Penelope, the ever dutiful, saintly wife, is left holding the fort while Odysseus sails off on a ten-year vacation fighting the Trojan War, followed by another decade of epic escapades and sexscapades.
And meanwhile Penelope is using her twelve maids to let themselves be used and abused by her suitors to buy time till Odysseus returns. Well, the suitors are killed, naturally. But the maids…Honor killing is still an epidemic in parts of India, and to see it from the POVs of the maids, who have so far been overlooked as extras in a play, felt like redemption.
The best thing in the book that worked for me was the way it is structured as a conversation between Penelope (from the afterlife) and you. A date that was >>> Netflix Night.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.
The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and…
In a world saturated with Greek Mythological Retellings, The Witch’s Heart is a breath of fresh (cold) air from Valhalla.
Angrboda—a woman who made a recent appearance in the God of War PS4 games—blazes across this book as the mother of monsters! Odin's wrath leaves her powerless, and her only escape route? Off to a remote forest she dashes. Enter Loki, that sly trickster, stumbling upon her and—bam!—love sparks, birthing three whelps, each harbouring their own cryptic fate.
It's a Norse mythology remix with a modern twist and a brand-new leading lady—epic, heartbreaking, and full of oomph! And if every time you see Loki, you see Tom Hiddleston's mischievous grin, you aren’t alone.
Angrboda's story begins where most witch tales end: with being burnt. A punishment from Odin for sharing her visions of the future with the wrong people, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the furthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, and her initial distrust of him-and any of his kind-grows reluctantly into a deep and abiding love.
Their union produces the most important things in her long life: a trio of peculiar children, each with a secret destiny, whom she…
You know how Madeline Miller jazzed up Circe's tale? Well, Vaishnavi did just that for Kaikeyi.
It is uncanny how Indian Mythology has been ignored on the world stage for decades and suddenly two reimaginings, one on Ramayana (Kaikeyi) and one on Mahabharata (Sons of Darkness) hit the shelves in the same year. Coming to the book. Well, forget what you've heard about Queen Kaikeyi being the 'villain' – this book flips that script!
Kaikeyi is the badass feminist hero you didn't know you needed. Vaishnavi Patel's retelling gives her this awesome makeover, painting her as this brave woman fighting for the rights of girls and women in a world where guys call all the shots. Gone are the days of Kaikeyi being labelled a jealous queen; here, she's a powerful force, making her own destiny in a world where traditions shove women into the background.
I love how uncomfortable and awesome at the same time the complete reversal of the traditional script of Ramayana in this book made me feel.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB PICK • "MYTHIC RETELLING AT ITS BEST." (R. F. Kuang, author of Babel)
“With a graceful, measured elegance” (New York Times), this lyrical novel reimagines the life of the infamous queen from the ancient epic the Ramayana, giving voice to an extraordinary woman determined to leave her mark in a world where gods and men dictate the shape of things to come.
I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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