“The Palace of Illusions” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“Love comes like lightning and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you cannot have.”
– Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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A novel take on the age-old saga of Mahabharata, narrated by Panchali or fondly known as Draupadi, this enchanting tale takes you to the beginning of her birth in the fire, to her earlier days in her father’s palace, to her stint as a woman with five husbands.
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We all are probably aware of the courses that Mahabharata took but do we ever think of what happened and why it happened especially from the point of view of a woman who was supposedly ‘modern’ and lucky for her time, being married to five men at a time?
The story provides answers to all these questions and opens up your eyes about the circumstance that led Draupadi to be the cause of the war.
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The narrative also provides important insights about her friendship with Krishna and a long lost love, that never came to fulfilment.
How were her relationships with the Pandavas? What were the sacrifices she had to make as a woman of that time and to support her husbands in the war?
Did she really get what she wanted in the end?
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Beautifully narrated, highly engaging and refreshingly stimulating.
The parts where the war is described does get a little boring because most of it is already been told so many times before, but the different take that the book offers on the war more than makes up for it.
Highly recommended for lovers of Indian mythology.
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Genre: indian-literature, mythology, war, fiction, fantasy, historical-fiction
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐/5

“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
– Anthony Doerr, All the Light we cannot see.
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Marie-Laure is a young blind child of a museum caretaker in France. Torn by war, Marie and her father had to flee France, taking with them an infamous diamond, in an attempt to save this artifact from the Nazis.
Werner, on the other hand, is a young German lad recruited in the Hitler youth army and is known for his exceptional intelligence and scientific curiosity.
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What brings them together is war. Both of them meet in the ancient wall city of Saint-Malo, where Marie and her father had taken refuge in Marie’s great uncle and Werner arrives with the invading German army.
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Set in a beautiful port city, taking you to parts of Nazi Germany here and there, the story moves beautifully through the eyes of both the protagonists, who only meet briefly in the end, yet one can almost feel the love lost between the two.
Written in wonderful prose, with an enchanting description of the characters, their complexities, the plight of two cities affected by war, the plight of two characters affected by war, so differently, yet so similar.
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If you are a fan of historical fiction, I definitely recommend this one. Or even if you aren’t, I would just recommend it for the beautiful way it is written. Everyone deserves realising that captivating experience, heartwarming and heart wrenching.
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Genre: fiction, historical-fiction, war, history
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficulty:⭐⭐⭐⭐/5