Shrikant Verma

First published in 1984, Shrikant Verma's masterpiece takes its name from the ancient Indian kingdom of Magadh, which rose to prominence between the sixth to the second century BCE. Narrated by a chorus of speakers--commoners, statesmen, and wanderers--these fifty-six poems piece together the history of Magadh and other long-forgotten kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent, their rise to power, and their eventual fall. These stark and haunting poems, eloquently translated from Hindi by Rahul Soni, lay bare all-too-familiar tales of guilt, ignorance, and arrogance. This landmark edition, finally available in the United States, vibrates with the unsettling force of cultural memory and contemporary relevance. Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award "In Magadh, Verma's] collection of verse, excellently translated, we can see, eerily prefigured, our own present: the grand illusions, the raucous vanity, the chronic self-doubt and ultimate fragility of power."--Pankaj Mishra

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi AwardMagadh, Shrikant Verma’s 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 Soni’s 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 power’s hollow victories, the peculiar burden of joy, how sorrow finds us wherever we may hide.’ Jeet Thayil