Carol Satyamurti was a poet and social scientist. She published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Countdown. Her work has been widely anthologized and won numerous awards, including first prize in the National Poetry Competition, 1986, and a Cholmondeley Award in 2000. Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling, of which this volume is an abridgment, won the inaugural Roehampton Poetry Prize in 2015.
""Carole Satyamurti’s version of the Mahabharata moves swiftly and powerfully. She has found a voice that’s capable of a wide variety of expression, and a line—basically classical English blank verse with a jazz-like freedom to swing—that propels the reader effortlessly onward through the cosmic, terrifying, erotic, sublime events of this extraordinary work. I think I shall never get tired of it."" -- Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass