Kaikeyi is a New York Times Bestseller!
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Praise for Kaikeyi
“Patel’s mesmerizing debut shines a brilliant light on the vilified queen from the Ramayana. …This easily earns its place on shelves alongside Madeline Miller’s Circe.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The novel is compelling and rich, drawing on the source material while furnishing its characters with new complexity and motivations. Fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe will fall hard for this story…” – Booklist (starred review)
“Even readers unfamiliar with the ancient Indian epic will find a lot to love in Patel’s spellbinding details of mythological characters and ancient times.” – BookPage (starred review)
“With spellbinding twists and turns, this is a political novel and very much a feminist one.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Patel brings a contemporary lens that will be familiar to any woman who has been labeled cold for showing assertiveness… Like the best stories, this engaging portrait will move you to take another look at the things you think you already know.” – The New York Times
“Patel’s brilliant debut novel humanizes Kaikeyi. Much like Circe by Madeline Miller and The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Patel depicts a world where patriarchal and misogynist norms attempt to force women into rigid roles, which their protagonists refuse to be forced into.” – BuzzFeed News
“This reimagination of the life of the queen in the Indian epic the Ramayana makes for a rich and engrossing debut.” – Ms. Magazine
“Patel’s writing is lush and imaginative, fashioning a story that is as ambitious in scale and scope as the poem it takes its heroine from. From its complex politics and its willingness to explore complex questions about religion to its assortment of strong female characters and tragic feel, Kaikeyi is a novel that rightly deserves all the buzz it’s going to get this spring.” – Paste Magazine
“Vaishnavi Patel boldly reimagines the life of Kaikeyi, the villainized stepmother from the ancient Sanskrit poem Rāmāayana, in her epic, exhilarating debut novel, Kaikeyi… Woven from a mixture of legends, ancient literature and Patel’s own vibrant creativity, this spellbinding story of destiny, divine battles and family ties is intricate and action-packed.” – Shelf Awareness
“In ‘Kaikeyi,’ Patel resets the balance of power, creating an unforgettable heroine who understands that it isn’t necessarily kings or gods who change history but a disgraced woman who can look upon a group of girls and see ‘a child, freer than her mother had been.'” – The Washington Po