ASURA : Tale of the Vanquished The Story of Ravana and His People

The Ramayana is known across India as the story of Rama, who kills the demon Ravana. This book gives the other side. Ravana narrates his own life, and so does Bhadra, an Asura of no standing who follows him.

The old Asura empire has broken into small, quarrelling kingdoms under the dominance of the Devas. Desperate, the Asuras turn to a young leader, Ravana. Bhadra and other ordinary men believe that life will improve under him and choose to follow.

Ravana is iron-willed and fiercely ambitious. He wins battle after battle and carves a vast empire out of Deva territory. Yet even at the height of his success, the poor Asuras see little change in their own lives. Then one action of Ravana's alters the history of the world.

The book is a retelling in two voices. One is a king who says he challenged the Gods for the sake of his daughter and freed his people from caste-based Deva rule. The other is a common man who calls himself the loser in an epic told by others. It is an epic of war and empire, and it treats the Ramayana from the side of the defeated.