Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award
Magadh, Shrikant Vermas masterpiece, was first published in Hindi in 1984 and is widely regarded as one of the most important works of modern Indian poetry. A chorus of narrators commoners, statesmen, nameless wanderers pieces together the histories of ancient cities and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent, their rise to splendour, their decline and eventual fall. In poems that are stark and urgent yet arch and richly allusive, Verma lays bare their tales of corruption, guilt, ignorance and arrogance. Rahul Sonis landmark translation stays faithful to the spare, haunting, incantatory cadences of the original, revealing how startlingly prescient and relevant Magadh remains today.
Forty years after, these poems are more relevant than ever, telling of powers hollow victories, the peculiar burden of joy, how sorrow finds us wherever we may hide. Jeet Thayil
