The Devil Take Love Author: Sudhir Kakar-PENGUIN BOOKS
In the most powerful city of the ancient world, the temple for the god
of desire, Kama, towers over the temple of his destroyer, the lord of
Time, Shiva. A cult of pleasure is sweeping through the land. Under the
shadow of certain punishment by death, a great poet reflects on the
journey of his life, and the ceaseless conflict between morality and
desire.
A young man from a provincial town, Jalandhar, arrives in the
magnificent city of Ujjayini. His astonishing brilliance as a poet is
recognized immediately. The formidable young king of Avanti becomes the
poet’s chief patron. This is the story of Bhartrihari, the greatest
Sanskrit poet of love.
The poet’s fame grows at fabulous speed; his success is effortless. But
the journey of his self is not as smooth: he fluctuates between sexual
passion and erotic disenchantment, the appeal of the senses in war with
the call of the spirit.
With acute insight and sinuous elegance, Sudhir Kakar’s best novel yet, The Devil Take Love,
presents in lush detail life in seventh century cosmopolitan India,
while inhabiting the true depths of a poet’s mind and superbly evoking
his distinctive voice: impassioned, sardonic, dismayed, pensive.
