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Roundfire Books
March 2015
On Sale: February 27, 2015
Featuring: Ravanna; Mandodari
ISBN: 1782798617
EAN: 9781782798613
Kindle: B00SI6J9QO
Paperback / e-Book
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Fiction
In the second age of the world, a time of prehistory, a
time of myth, Mandodari, queen of the demon king Ravana,
invents chess to carve out a role for herself in a world
where male, martial virtues are paramount. As a chess
player, she can play at warfare; as queen, she can be the
most potent warrior on the battlefield. The Queen's Play attempts to write the origin of chess
into the narrative cycles of the Ramayana, one of the
two formative epics of ancient India.The cursory mention
of a chess-like game in the Ramayana lore offers
interesting parallels and openings between the game and the
themes of the epic poem. At the centre of it is a queen,
first entering and then growing from strength to strength to
become the most powerful piece on the board, inventing a
game which closely parallels the epic battle taking place
not far from the royal palace, a battle which she is not
permitted to join, a battle where she will lose her king.
Foregrounding certain episodes from the vast tapestry of the
epic, the novel develops new narrative variations that feed
back into the classical text with freshly imagined material.
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