One of India's greatest epics,\nthe kathasaritsagara is thought to have been compiled around 1070 CE by\nsomadeva Bhatt, during the reign of Raja Ananta of the lohara dynasty of\nKashmir. Even though this extraordinary work is one of the longest creations\nin Indian and World literature, It is considered to be only a small part of\nan even longer work called brihatkatha, composed by gunadhya in a lost\nlanguage known as Paisachi. Somadeva collected and retold the stories of the\nkathasaritsagara in Sanskrit to entertain Raja ananta?s wife, suryavati. This\nmasterpiece is foundational for many of India?s best-loved folk tale\ntraditions, such as Vetala pachisi and Panchatantra, and it has influenced\nmany of the world?s best-known classics, including one thousand and one\nnights, the decameron, and the Canterbury tales. In addition, contemporary\nwriters like Salman Rushdie have drawn from the work in Books like Haroun and\nthe sea of stories. Within its vast frame, the kathasaritsagara has several\nhundred stories that owe their origin to India?s limitless storehouse of\nmyth, scripture, and folklore. Snake gods rub shoulders with enchanted\nprincesses, and heroic warrior-kings battle Rakshasa tall as the sky and wide\nas the ocean. Celestial apsara seduce handsome princes, wise prostitutes\ncounsel errant husbands, fools parley with ghouls, and riddlers and talking\nmonkeys pace through the tales. Here you will find talking birds and\nswindlers, beggars and conjure, sages and polymaths, divine beings and\nsemi-divine vidyadharas, yakshas and Yoginis, walking corpses and sleeping\ngiants, and a host of other remarkable creatures mingling with ordinary men\nand women in a multitude of magical kingdoms, enchanted islands, and\nforbidding forests in the three worlds?heaven, Earth, and the Netherworld.\nAnd through this skein of stories contained in eighteen books, somadeva spins\ntales of love, infidelity, death, rebirth, sacrifice, fulfilment, courage,\ncowardliness, honesty, untruth, separation, togetherness, joy, sadness, and\nmuch, much more. The central story of this epic revolves around the son of\nthe famed Raja udayana, naravahanadatta, and his marital quests, in the\ncourse of which he acquires numerous wives, encounters a host of memorable\ncharacters, and wins supremacy over the mystical vidyadharas. Meena Arora\nnayak?s brilliant new retelling of the kathasaritsagara, the first major\nrendition of the epic in a quarter century, closely follows the adventures of\nnaravahanadatta and brings these ancient tales to new and enthralling life.