In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata

‘In an ocean of studies on the Grand Epic – The Mahābhārata – Brian Black’s voice is unique, fresh and compelling. In a careful and detailed dialogic reading of select plots involving central characters like Bhishma, Draupadi, Duryodhana and Sri Krishna, the author points out inherent dialogicality in the epic text. This work is an important contribution to Indological and Dialogic Studies’.

Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Professor, City University of New York.

‘This wonderfully rich book by Brian Black emphasizes the often noted subtlety of the dharma in the Mahābhārata, and brilliantly shows how that subtlety carries different connotations depending on who is speaking, and the circumstances. This insightful work provides depth and specificity to our view of the text’s presentation of the dharma as subtle, and is a major contribution to our understanding of the Mahābhārata’.

Bruce M. Sullivan, Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University.

"In an ocean of studies on the Grand Epic – The Mahābhārata – Brian Black’s voice is unique, fresh and compelling. In a careful and detailed dialogic reading of select plots involving central characters like Bhishma, Draupadi, Duryodhana and Sri Krishna, the author points out inherent dialogicality in the epic text. This work is an important contribution to Indological and Dialogic Studies." - Lakshmi Bandlamudi, City University of New York

"This wonderfully rich book by Brian Black emphasizes the often noted subtlety of the dharma in the Mahābhārata, and brilliantly shows how that subtlety carries different connotations depending on who is speaking, and the circumstances. This insightful work provides depth and specificity to our view of the text’s presentation of the dharma as subtle, and is a major contribution to our understanding of the Mahābhārata." - Bruce M. Sullivan, Northern Arizona University

"In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata is a nuanced study of the dialogic form in the Mahābhārata. […] One of the strongest features is its critical examination of contradictions and inconsistencies as an important part of the literary and philosophical fabric of the epic itself. […] In Dialogue is an insightful study of dialogue and its centrality to the epic’s multivalent understandings of dharma. It is an engaging read for scholars of religion and world literature, as well as non-specialists who want to grapple with the complexities of the Mahābhārata." - Anusha Sudindra Rao in Reading Religion

"What Black has produced is nothing less than a sophisticated reading of the constitutively 'polycentric and multivocal' epic as a whole, centering its ways of subjecting the existential and normative dimensions of our lives to rational exploration through dialogue ... Ultimately, however, this book is far more ambitious. It does not merely aim to advance our interpretation of the epic. We are being asked to learn something from the conversations begun and obsessively returned to by narrators and characters – for Black, to learn to read such dialogues is to ask how we might learn to read and to think about our own lives" - Sonam Kachru in Journal of Hindu Studies