Friday, November 02, 2012

Book Review: The Krishna Key

If you liked Angels and Demons, do check out The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghi. After Amish, here's another Indian author who's done a great job of blending mythology and contemporary, facts and fiction, with simple yet polished writing that will immediately appeal to Indian as well as Western readers. 

After Saini, a history professor, and his PhD student Priya, are falsely implicated and arrested for the murder of another researcher and Saini's friend, they find themselves in the throes of an adrenalin pumping race to decipher the mystery of the Krishna Key, while staying away from the clutches of the law, and the gleaming steel blades of an assassin.

Ashwin uses a very interesting track - Krishna's life in his own words - running parallel to the main story set in contemporary India, to add richness and a sense of mystique to the narrative. Extensively borrowing from recent history, geography, modern science, astronomy, metallurgy, mathematics, the Vedas, Greek philosophers, the Mahabharat, half-truths and conspiracy theories, Ashwin weaves a fascinating web of intrigue, where the line between truth and fiction is very, very blurred! Read the book with google.com open on a laptop close by; you will find it fascinating to go beyond the lines - and see how sometimes, truth is really stranger than fiction!

One thing these books and authors have awakened in me - a deep sense of intrigue and curiosity about the Vedas, The Upanishad's and the depth of ancient Hindu wisdom. History was never so exciting!

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