Author: Charles Allen
This book was the reason I fell in love
with King Ashoka, the "stumpy, pot-bellied, pumpkin-faced, fragile King
who had the tendency to faint under stress".
The book itself is
written like a detective story, narrating how Ashoka's life was
painstakingly pieced together clue by tiny clue by the "Orientalists",
beginning in the 18th Century.
Charles Allen has kept it real,
without being pretentious, overly academic or puffed up with his own
importance as many literary historical non-fiction writers tend to do.
The language is simple, current, and narrative.
At the same
time, there's a faint hint of the author's tenderness towards this King
throughout the book. In the way he regrets the way Ashoka and his
efforts in making Buddhism the way it is now, have been unrecognised
even now, in the way he recognizes the tender feelings in Ashoka's one
of the more emotional edicts near the Ajanta caves when he was young,
and the way he talks about his appearance.
I’m not a great
non-fiction reader, but this book, I absolutely loved. It also triggered
a need in me to want to know more details about King Ashoka Maurya, and
everything to do with that period.