HarperCollins presents HOW TO LOVE IN SANSKRIT: Poems edited and translated by Anusha Rao & Suhas Mahesh
Published by Harper Perennial
Hardback | Poetry | 328 pp | INR 599
Available wherever books are sold | Releasing on 14 February 2024
NEW DELHI, Feb. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ —
ABOUT THE BOOK
Sanskrit has too often been regarded as the sacred language of the gods, yet it is love that has been the overwhelming obsession of Sanskrit writers for over 3,000 years. How to Love in Sanskrit is an invitation to Sanskrit love poetry, bringing together verses and short prose pieces by celebrated writers like Kalidasa and Banabhatta, Buddhist and Jain monks, scholars, emperors, and even some modern-day poets. How do you brew a love potion? Turn someone crimson with a compliment? How do you make love? How do you quarrel and make up? Nurse a broken heart? And how do you let go? There’s something for everyone in this brilliantly translated ancient guide to love for modern readers.
‘Witty, surprising and joyous … A book to pick up, a book to gift.’
– ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM
‘Beautiful … A book that will delight the reader.’
– BIBEK DEBROY
Anusha Rao says, “We are so firmly caught up in our own concerns that it is difficult to inhabit the world of those who came long before us – but what better and more pleasurable way to do so than to look at how they loved? Every verse here has been chosen painstakingly and translated without jargon or pretence in a way that readers today can enjoy. Our hope is that every reader finds poems that tug at their heart and experiences the rasa that these authors promise!”
Suhas Mahesh says, “Can we recast Sanskrit love poems into English in a way that even those uninitiated into poetry can enjoy? This is the spirit that animates our book. It contains 220 moving, funny and at times frustrated, reflections on love from 3,000 years of Indian thought. The book teaches you how to love by showing it depicted in its many hues, rather than through dry instruction. Translations from Sanskrit are often re-translations of well-worn material, but we break much fresh ground in this book, introducing material unknown to the public, and sometimes even to scholarship.”
Rahul Soni, Associate Publisher, HarperCollins says, “This is a charming, delightful, moving – and often astonishing – compendium of wonders. Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh have done an extraordinary job of finding and collecting these gems, and then rendering them into a playful, nimble, modern English that will appeal to present-day readers. There’s something for everyone here, whether it’s a lay reader looking for something diverting, a poetry lover, a scholar, someone seeking insight or instruction, or just someone looking to gift a beautiful and meaningful book to a loved one – everyone should buy a copy, for themselves, and to gift!”
PRAISE FOR HOW TO LOVE IN SANSKRIT
‘Witty, surprising and joyous, this book banishes notions of solemnity and turgid scholarship that one might nurse about translations from the Sanskrit. Several translations here wear their learning lightly, as good poems must, reminding us that centuries are separated “by historians, not poets”. A book to pick up, a book to gift.’
– ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM
‘This is a beautiful book, with wonderful contemporary translations of love poetry in Sanskrit (with some in Prakrit). The translations will charm and entice readers to read the originals. A difficult book to write, but since the two editors wear their scholarship lightly, they make it seem easy. A book that will delight the reader.’
– BIBEK DEBROY
ABOUT THE EDITORS/TRANSLATORS
Anusha Rao is a scholar of Sanskrit and Indian religion who likes writing new things about very old things. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Toronto and writes a column in the Deccan Herald presenting witty Sanskrit flavoured takes on contemporary issues.
Suhas Mahesh is a scholar of Sanskrit and Prakrit with a terrible weakness for good verse, rare manuscripts and arcane grammar. By day, Suhas is a materials physicist with a PhD from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS INDIA
HarperCollins is celebrating its 31st anniversary this year, having begun publishing in India in 1992. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India has won the Publisher of the Year Award four times at Tata Literature Live! in 2022, 2021, 2018 and 2016, and at Publishing Next in 2021 & 2015. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.
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