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Showing posts with the label A Spoke in the Wheel

Making Authentic History Common Knowledge

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Amita Kanekar’s new historical novel Fear of Lions transports us into the world of Aurangzeb – a world of contradictions, where extravagant lifestyle and abject poverty are prevalent side by side…where a rebellion so powerful, led by a rumoured witch, threatens the Mughal Empire. This is Amita’s second novel after A Spoke in the Wheel, which was set during the period of Emperor Ashoka’s rule.  The novel took about 15 years to reach its culmination with the interspersion of other works such as The Portuguese Sea Forts of Goa, with Chaul, Korlai and Vasai along the way. It was mainly reworking the original writing and more in depth research that took up time. ‘I changed my attitude to the story and the way I looked at how it should be written because of exposure to ideas about caste, about anti-caste struggle, because basically this is an anti-caste story,’ says Amita.  The struggle of taking the research she had done and drawing a well-crafted appealing story out of it was a real one