Parva: A tale of war, Peace, Love, Death, God, and Man

The novel narrates the story of the Hindu epic Mahabharata mostly using monologue as a literary technique. Several principal characters found in the original Mahabharata reminisce almost their entire lives. Both the setting and the context for the reminiscence is the onset of the Kurukshetra War. Parva is acknowledged to be S.L.Bhyrappa's greatest work.Non-Kannadigas who have read it in it's Hindi and Marathi translations consider it one of the masterpieces of modern Indian literature.It is a transformation of an ancient legend into a modern novel.In this process,it has gained rational credibility and a human perspective.The main incident,the Bharata war,symbolic of the birthpangs of a new world-order,depicts a heroic but vain effort to arrest the disintegration and continue the prevailing order.It is viewed from the stand points of the partisan participants and judged with reference to the objective understanding of Krishna.Narration,dialogue, monologue and comment all are employed for it's presentation.Shot through with irony,pity and understanding objectivity,the novel ends with the true tragic vision of faith in life and hope for mankind. Parva has been translated into the following major Indian languages; Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu apart from English. The novel narrates the story of the Hindu epic Mahabharata mostly using monologue as a literary technique. Several principal characters found in the original Mahabharata reminisce almost their entire lives. Both the setting and the context for the reminiscence is the onset of the Kurukshetra War.