Today's Feature: Divakaruni. Palace of Illusions.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Palace of Illusions, published in 2008, is a novel that retells the Mahabharata in the words of Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas. You can find out more about the book here: Reading Guide - Divakaruni. Palace of Illusions.

Here is a quote from the preface to the book in which she recollects reading the Mahabharata as a girl; she was already thinking about the novel she would write [highlighting is mine]:

If I ever wrote a book, I remember thinking (though at that time I didn't really believe this would ever happen), I would place the women in the forefront of the action. I would uncover the story that lay invisible between the lines of the men's exploits. I would have one of them tell it herself, with all her joys and doubts, her struggles and her triumphs, her heartbreaks, her achievements, the unique female way in which she sees her world and her place in it.