Intelligent Epic

The Chola empire, which once spread across the peninsula, all the way up the eastern coast and over the Indian Ocean, ought to have made it into mass-market historical fiction before. It has won dedicated readers in Ponniyin Selvan and other Tamil classics, and Devi Yesodharan’s Empire is a welcome, though lighter offering in English. The writer has spun an entertaining novel out of a detail from the copious inscriptions of the Cholas. There were many foreigners in the Chola kingdom, which traded far to the east and west, and among them were female bodyguards from Greece employed in the royal palace. They were called yavanis or foreigners. Yesodharan likes history, wears her knowledge of it lightly, gives her characters flesh and sinew and creates a universe. The reader is soon immersed in the reign of King Rajendra, called Gangaikonda Chola for having brought home the waters of the Ganga from his conquests to the east. In shaping the palace, ports, markets and back streets of 11th century Nagapattinam, Yesodharan skips the usual flat-footed explanations and tells her story fluently. The yavani at the centre of Empire is Aremis, a girl left behind, along with boy soldiers, by a Greek force that attempted to invade Nagapattinam and met a sorry end. In the training grounds of the Chola warriors, she excels as an archer but, not being a Chola, she cannot be acknowledged as a leader. Her teacher, Shreya, is harder on her than on the boys, and that’s because she’s his best fighter. Serving as the king’s ceremonial bodyguard, Aremis also carries out covert assassinations for Anantha, the king’s general. Aremis is competitive, fixed on her target, occasionally swayed but not deflected by passion, but she is a young warrior in an ageing empire. Rajendra’s army is on its way to invade Srivijaya, but Anantha and even the king have lost the lust for war. Yesodharan does not tie up every loose end in her plot, which is strangely satisfying. Even better, she turns the reader’s eye to stories beyond the yavani’s, about those at the receiving end of a conqueror’s feats. Perhaps it’s not literature, but it’s intelligently written and leaves the reader looking forward to the next book. Ignore the computer-generated cover art, with its copy-pasted turbans and the girl-warrior wearing a dress that appears to have been ordered online. Just curl up and take a trip into the 11th century. You’re in good hands with this writer.

—Latha Anantharaman