Modern Interpretations
The Tamil writer S. Ramakrishnan has written a critically acclaimed book based on the Mahabharata called "Uba Paandavam". It discusses the story in a non-linear manner from a traveller's point of view.
The Kannada novelist S.L. Bhyrappa wrote a novel in Kannada (now translated into most Indian languages and English) titled Parva, giving a new interpretation to the story of Mahabharata. He tried to understand the social and ethical practices in these regions and correlate them with the story of Mahabharata.
Malayalam writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair's novel Randamoozham (English: Second Turn) tells the Mahabharata from Bhima's point of view. Mrityunjay (English: Triumph Over Death) written by Shivaji Sawant is a novel with Karna as the central character of Mahabharata.
In Indian cinema, several film versions of the epic exist, dating back to 1920. The internationally acclaimed parallel Bengali film director Satyajit Ray also intended to direct a theatrical adaptation of the epic, but the project was never realized.
In the late 1980s, the Mahabharat TV series, directed by Ravi Chopra, was televised and shown on India's national television (Doordarshan). In the Western world, a well-known presentation of the epic is Peter Brook's nine-hour play, which premiered in Avignon in 1985, and its five-hour movie version The Mahabharata (1989).
Among literary reinterpretations of the Mahabharata is Shashi Tharoor's major work entitled The Great Indian Novel, an involved literary, philosophical, and political novel which superimposes the major moments of post-independence India in the 20th century onto the driving events of the Mahabharata epic.
Mahabharata was also reinterpreted by Shyam Benegal in Kalyug. Kalyug is a modern-day replaying of the Mahabharata.
Amar Chitra Katha published a 1,260 page comic book version of the Mahabharata.
Western interpretations of the Mahabharata include William Buck's Mahabharata and Elizabeth Seeger's Five Sons of King Pandu.
Read more about this topic: Mahabharata, Versions, Translations, and Derivative Works
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