SSC
'The Great Indian Novel' is written by:
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Answer: Option C — Shashi Tharoor
Detailed Solution
"The Great Indian Novel" is a satirical novel by Shashi Tharoor, published in 1989. It retells the epic Mahabharata as the story of the Indian independence movement and the first decades after independence.
About the novel:
Characters from the Mahabharata are recast as figures of modern Indian history. For example:
Bhishma (called Gangaji in the novel) represents Mahatma Gandhi.
Dhritarashtra represents Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter Priya Duryodhani represents Indira Gandhi.
Pandu represents Subhas Chandra Bose, and Vidur represents Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Karna represents Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The title is a pun: "Maha" means great and "Bharata" means India.
The novel is divided into 18 "books", like the 18 parvas of the Mahabharata.
It won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Best Book, Eurasia region).
About Shashi Tharoor:
He was born in 1956 in London to a Malayali family.
He worked at the United Nations for nearly 30 years and was Under-Secretary-General for Communications. He was a candidate for UN Secretary-General in 2006.
He is a Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
His other books include "Show Business", "Riot", "An Era of Darkness" (Sahitya Akademi Award, 2019), "Why I Am a Hindu", "The Paradoxical Prime Minister" and "Ambedkar: A Life".
Other important Indian English novels:
- "Midnight's Children": Salman Rushdie (Booker Prize, 1981).
- "A Suitable Boy": Vikram Seth (1993).
- "The Shadow Lines": Amitav Ghosh (1988).
Why not the other options?
- ✗Salman Rushdie wrote "Midnight's Children" and "The Satanic Verses".
- ✗Vikram Seth wrote "A Suitable Boy" and "The Golden Gate".
- ✗Amitav Ghosh wrote "The Shadow Lines" and the "Ibis Trilogy".
Quick tip
Remember: "The Great Indian Novel" = Shashi Tharoor (1989, Mahabharata as the freedom struggle); "An Era of Darkness" = Tharoor (Sahitya Akademi 2019); "Midnight's Children" = Rushdie.
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Books & Authors — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Books & Authors, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers famous books and their authors, including ancient Indian texts, works of the freedom struggle, classic and modern literature, autobiographies of famous people, and recently published books by well-known personalities. Questions usually name a book and ask for its author, or the other way round. Ancient and historical books, such as Arthashastra (Kautilya), Indica (Megasthenes) and Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore), are tested most often. Autobiographies are another favourite, so learn titles such as 'My Experiments with Truth' (Mahatma Gandhi) and 'Wings of Fire' (A. P. J. Abdul Kalam). Practise the books and authors questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.