'Plato famously sought to dethrone the epic poets from their station as educators in morals and ethics. In India, by contrast, the great epics, the Mahabharata above all, have been forever unassailed in their authority as teachers and interpreters of the human condition. Curiously, however, their messages for moral philosophy have been slow to emerge in the field of contemporary thought. With this new book, essayist and playwright Gurcharan Das guides us through the moral contours of the epic world with analytical insight and literary panache. In doing so, he reveals vistas enlarging our understanding not just of the past, but, most importantly, of the moral dilemmas we face today.'

- Matthew Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Chicago, and Directeur d'études, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris