Who is the author of the book 'The Great Indian Novel'?

Correct — B. The Great Indian Novel (1989) is by Shashi Tharoor. It retells the Mahabharata as the story of the Indian independence movement and the decades after 1947.

The epic's characters become political figures: Gangaji is Gandhi, Dhritarashtra is Nehru, Priya Duryodhani is Indira Gandhi → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Devdutt Pattanaik — Devdutt Pattanaik also retold the Mahabharata, in Jaya, but as mythology, not as a satire of Indian politics. The Great Indian Novel is Tharoor's.
• (c)
  Sanjeev Sanyal — Sanjeev Sanyal writes history and economics, such as Land of the Seven Rivers and The Ocean of Churn. He did not write this novel.
• (d)
  Gurcharan Das — Gurcharan Das read the Mahabharata for its ethics in The Difficulty of Being Good, and wrote India Unbound. The novel is Tharoor's.

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN official and Member of Parliament, published The Great Indian Novel in 1989 through Viking. It is a satirical novel that maps the Mahabharata onto India's freedom struggle and its first three decades of independence.

His non-fiction includes An Era of Darkness, on British rule, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award (English) for 2019.

Key facts

• The Great Indian Novel (1989) is by Shashi Tharoor.
• It recasts the Mahabharata as the story of the Indian independence movement and the decades after it.
• Tharoor's An Era of Darkness won the Sahitya Akademi Award (English) for 2019.
• Devdutt Pattanaik's Jaya is an illustrated retelling of the Mahabharata.

Common traps

• Picking Pattanaik or Das because both wrote on the Mahabharata. Tharoor's is the one written as a novel.

No directly related past PYQ was found.