Those Eighteen Days (Volume 1)

Excellent narration of the details of the 18-day Mahabharata War. Dr. Narayanacharyulu, an eminent Vedic scholar from Karnataka and a Doctorate in Modern English Literature renders it in a gripping conversational style providing details as though it were an eyewitness account.

Of particular significance in the first volume are the chapters dealing with Bhishma’s dilemmas on the battlefield and eventual condemnation to the bed of arrows, and the chapters dealing with Abhimanyu leading to his death on the thirteenth day, the day remembered for the degeneration of the war into Adharmic, with blatant violation of war-rules by Kauravas first and subsequently everybody.

The books come with a lot of philosophical discourse about aspects of dharma and as such becomes heavy reading occasionally. But overall a riveting account of the most prestigious war in the Indic civilizational history that bore testimony to many a principle of dharma and divine.

(This is the 550-page first of the two-volume set)