The Palace of Illusions

I finally finished reading The Palace of Illusions.  In this beautiful rewriting of an ancient and important tale, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni liberates Panchaali and opens the Mahabharat to the female human heart. The prose/poetry shines as intricately as the "patina of magic" from which The Palace of Illusions is described. The book is full of deep human love - complex and secret, unfounded then found; full of loyalty and loss, vengeful and ultimately, forgiving. Drenched with vignettes of boons and curses and magic, the story is indeed the author's forte but it is unlike her other novels for the story is not fully her own, yet it is marvelously lent and in return, so richly rendered. The lessons from the sacred text are laced in the heady, gripping tale already foretold. The Palace of Illusions is dazzling and I am spinning back to the first page to once again relish the tale.

P.S. The Bhagavad Gita starts in Chapter 31 (Preparation).

-------------------------
From the back of the book...
http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/books/palace_of_illusions

Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to the time of the Indian epic The Mahabharat—a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical. Through her narrator Panchaali, the wife of the legendary five Pandavas brothers, Divakaruni gives us a rare feminist interpretation of an epic story.
 The novel traces Panchaali’s life, beginning with her magical birth in fire as the daughter of a king before following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at the brothers’ sides through years of exile and a terrible civil war. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her stratagems to take over control of her household from her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husband’s most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female voice in a world of warriors, gods, and ever-manipulating hands of fate.