Basing his convoluted story on the Mahabharata , with its 18 chapters or Parvans and similar incidents or characters (e.g., a blind king; five brothers sharing one wife), Tharoor coalesces myth, dreams, folklore, religion, and legend in this first-person, near-death life narration of Ved Vyas. The reader suspends disbelief as the garrulous old man omnisciently relates secret conversations, lustful couplings, the assassination of Ganga Data (read Ghandi), and the intimacies of Lord and Lady Drewpad (read Mountbatten). Overambitious Tharoor amalgamates the epic's components with India's freedom struggles with Great Britain.
