Publisher's Synopsis
An excerpt:
"I am Amba."
The voice rang in Devavrata's ear like a forgotten melody ... Images stuck in lost time veered in and out of focus. Questions came flooding in. How could it be Amba? What was she doing, here and now? The questions stuck in his throat, refusing expression. Then the voice in his ear shattered and a grey miasma crawled out of it, a grey that he associated with pain and anger. The glow faded, and the grey fog grew until it shadowed every color. Amba. She is here. I must see her. He tried to turn. The stub of an arrow, under the pit of his left arm, made him pause at every movement, however slight.
Synopsis
Devavrata Bhishma is dying, wounded. He tells Yudhishthira how the Kauravas established the frontier trading town of Hastinapura. When the river Sarasvati dried up, migrants from the doomed Panchnad cities poured into Hastinapura seeking safety and support. But they also fought with the forest-dwelling Nagas. Hastinapura under Devavrata addresses the crisis, but at a cost to his personal life.
Reviews
...Ramakrishna's debut novel ... comes as a welcome surprise. A software architect with a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon, reading him is a rare pleasure.
-- The Statesman by Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya, Writer's Workshop, Kolkata
...I enjoyed reading [The Last Kaurava] ... I love [the] insane ambition that underlies this project... actually a very natural impulse for an Indian because the Mahabharata resides inside us, inside all of us.
-- Gurcharan Das, Writer, Columnist
No Indian ever hears the [epics] for the first time ... it requires greate courage ... as the author has done. He captures the reader's attention from the start, with a sense of theatre, making the characters tanguble. ... [The book] conveys the high tension of the immediate.
-- S. Ananthalakshmy, Ph.D., Balamandir Research Foundation, Chennai
... an extraordinary book. Anyone remotely familiar with the Mahabharata will be hypnotized. Together, the theme, the structure, and the style all make the book the perfect novel. In fiction, it is rather rare to find rich character studies together with a fascinating plot and a lively style, yet, this novel has all three.
-- Dr. Jean Phil, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA
Kamesh Ramakrishna's book ... artfully [fills] in the spaces between incidents, [shifts]ng the perspective of the events to see them with fresh eyes, ... The book ... never pretends to replace [the Mahabharata] ...
-- Dr. George Drance, Professor/Actor/Director/Theater, ?Fordham College, New York
