Books like The Mahabharata
The epic war between two branches of a royal family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, contains within it countless stories, including the Bhagavad Gita, and every moral question imaginable.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Mahabharata
The Aeneid
Aeneas flees burning Troy and journeys across the Mediterranean to Italy to found the people who will build Rome, in Virgil's epic of duty, loss and destiny.
The Iliad
The rage of Achilles drives the climax of the Trojan War, and the grief that follows reshapes what heroism means.
The Odyssey
After the Trojan War, Odysseus spends ten years trying to get home to Ithaca, through monsters, gods and temptations, while his wife holds off the suitors who have taken over his house.
Metamorphoses
Gods, nymphs, and mortals transform into trees, rivers, animals, and stars in a sweeping poem that contains virtually every myth the Western world inherited.
Paradise Lost
Satan, cast out of Heaven after his rebellion, makes his way to Eden and tempts Adam and Eve, in an epic poem that makes the Devil its most compelling character.
The Axion Esti
A long poem in the form of an Orthodox liturgy, moving from the creation of the world through the Greek war of the 1940s to a hymn of praise for the things of this world.
Victory City
In fourteenth-century southern India, Pampa Kampana, a girl given divine powers, conjures the city of Bisnaga out of a handful of seeds and lives for centuries to see what becomes of it.
Joseph and His Brothers
Mann's retelling of Genesis across four novels: Jacob's favourite son, Joseph, is sold into Egypt by his brothers and rises in Pharaoh's land.
Return to Ithaca
Odysseus, worn out by twenty years of war and wandering, washes up among the Phaeacians and makes his way home to Ithaca, where suitors are eating through his house.
A Thousand Ships
The Trojan War told by its women, from the Trojan queens waiting on the shore to be taken as slaves to Penelope writing increasingly sharp letters to her absent husband.
Interview with the Vampire
In a San Francisco room, a vampire tells a young reporter his story, from his making on an eighteenth-century Louisiana plantation to his years with Lestat and the child vampire Claudia.
The Divine Comedy
A poet journeys through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise guided by Virgil and Beatrice, mapping the entire moral architecture of the medieval Christian universe.