Sambhaji

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

‘An African proverb goes: As long as the lions have no storytellers, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Sadly the history of India is still told from the perspective of those who invaded and occupied our country. Therefore I am very pleased to see a talented writer like Vishwas Patil vividly bringing alive a very important turning point in our history.'

– SANJEEV SANYAL economist and bestselling writer of The Ocean of Churn and Land of the Seven Rivers

Even as a child, Sambhaji has known he must stand alone. His mother died when he was barely two, and his father was always absent-chasing his own dream of 'Swaraj”, fighting to keep the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at bay. As the eldest son, Sambhaji is the true heir to Shivaji. He is valorous, wise and has the makings of a capable statesman. But there are dark forces at play in the palace. Shivaji's other queen, Soyrabai, is scheming to place her son Rajaram on the throne, and she has the support of several ministers whose misdemeanours Sambhaji is determined to expose. On 3 April 1680, Shivaji dies unexpectedly, and it is finally time for Sambhaji to rise to the challenge. He must now fight Aurangzeb, who has spent twenty years trying to smoke out the mountain rat', and whose presence in the Deccan poses an increasingly grave threat to the Maratha empire. And what could be better than the enemy's own brother-in-law willing to hand him the rat on a platter.

A moving portrait of an often misunderstood braveheart, Vishwas Patil's Sambhaji is a massive bestseller that has sold over a 100,000 copies in Marathi. Cinematic and ambitious in its scope, this is a keenly researched and splendidly executed period drama about one man's struggle to preserve his father's legacy and of the price extracted by the throne and the homeland.

Vishwas Patil is one of the most acclaimed Marathi writers today. He has written iconic novels like Mahanayak, Chandramukhi, Pangira, Zadazadati, Panipat, Sambhaji, Nagkeshar and Lust for Lalbaug. He has received the Priyadarshini National Award, the Vikhe Patil Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Zadazadati and the Gadkari Award for Mahanayak. In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious Dr Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) National Literature Award. Panipat has received thirty-eight awards since its publication in 1988 and was recently released as an English translation by Eka. Nagkeshar is being made into a television serial.

Vikrant Pande has published ten translations from Marathi into English, namely Ranjit Desai's Raja Ravi Varma, Shivaji: The Great Maratha (Shriman Yogi) and Karna: The Great Warrior (Radheya), N.S. Inamdar's Rau: The Love Story of Bajirao-Mastani and Shahenshah: The Story of Aurangzeb, Milind Bokil's Shala, V.P. Kale's Karmachari and Ratnakar Matkari's collection of horror short stories titled Darkness. His translation of Girish Kuber's Tatayan as The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation bagged the Gaja Capital Best Business Book Award 2019. His most recent translation is Kaka Vidhate's Duryodhan which was released by Eka. Vikrant's forthcoming translations include Anita Padhye's biography of Goldie Anand (Manjul Prakashan). He is also working on a book capturing 200 years of the State Bank of India, being published by Westland.

**Contents and Sample Pages**