Rakesh K. Kaul, an IIT gold medallist, migrated to the US in 1972. He was a founding contributor to the first Chair of India Studies at University of California, Berkeley, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania and the Mattoo Center for India Studies at the State University of New York. He is the author of the bestseller
The Last Queen of Kashmir. Kaul has had a distinguished business career as CEO and held leadership positions of publicly traded companies in the US. He serves as the Vice Chair of the Indo-American Arts Council.
It is AD 3000. Hiding from the world in a cave in Mount Kailash, Dawn encounters two strange beings on her sixteenth birthday. They urge the long-lost princess of Kashmir to fulfil the prophecy of fighting the Troika. This nefarious trinity-the merciless leader Arman, the AI war machine AIman and their supreme, omniscient overlord Dushita-is a vicious manipulator of stories, minds and histories. With an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons based in Kashmir, they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain-all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse.
With a motley group of five outlaw boys, Dawn sets upon a tumultuous journey across Time and Space to battle the most technologically lethal empire known to humanity. Her only hope is to seek out secrets hidden in the Niti folk tales of Kashmir and unlock the powers within her to become the ultimate warrior.
As the only female left in the world, Dawn will decide the fate of the Universe. But can she unleash her body, mind and spirit and ignite the fiery cosmic power of all the women who have ever lived?
A sci-fi saga that reveals eternal truths as it traverses the terrains of the Kashmir Valley-the birthplace of the greatest stories ever.
Stories unite the world and they are worth fighting for . . . The core of this fantastical tale is a message for all eternity. - Anupam Kher (actor and author of Lessons Life Taught Me, Unknowingly: An Autobiography)In the true spirit of our master storyteller ancestors from Kashmir, Kaul builds a mesmerizing maze of a narrative. Read him for this very pure joy. - Rahul Pandita (journalist and author of Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir)Brilliant, original and magically creative, Rakesh Kaul's
Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir sees Kashmiri wisdom come alive through the genre of science fiction. - Padma Shri Amitabh Mattoo (foundation director of the Australia India Institute)
Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir is an epic novel in the style of
Brave New World, but it goes much further beyond that classic. Set in 3000 AD, it presents a dystopic vision of the world that is run using mind control and AI. It is the story of the last free individuals who challenge the tyrant and eventually triumph. A story at many different levels, its deepest narrative is about the workings of Universal Consciousness. The book connects this story-set in the future-with the mystical past of Kashmir. It is a book to be savoured in multiple ways. A tour de force! - Padma Shri Subhash Kak (regents professor emeritus, Oklahoma State University)Rakesh Kaul's book dishes out a kaleidoscopic admixture of fabulation, metafiction, futurism and fantasy. Kashmir, in the author's consciousness, as it emerges in the tripartite structure of the narrative becomes a syntagm of "all Indic folk stories": The Body, The Mind and finally, Life. Kaul's book reflects an epicentric shift from the millennial to the cataclysmic and climatically closes the narrative with a pronounced shift to an optimistic renewal, as in the Biblical Revelation: "After the demonic apocalypse, a new heaven and a new earth will emerge". The book is a must for scholars and teachers alike. - Ashok Aima (vice chancellor, Central University of Jammu)Skillfully weaving these age-old Niti stories together with everything from extraordinarily imaginative futuristic science and technology to the history of Kashmir and the remarkable contributions its people have made to the world, Kaul illuminates not just the vital importance of the love and strength held in the heart of every woman, but the unimaginable power of the cosmic feminine force. - Teri Degler (author of The Divine Feminine Fire: Creativity and Your Yearning to Express Your Self)One wonders at the mind of an author who so poetically yet powerfully, imaginatively yet injunctively, weaves together not only the past and the present but, this time, also the future. A novel truly for our anchorless lives and times, Dawn is part-fantasy, part-reality, but always authentic truth. Riveting stuff-and such fun along the way! - Shonaleeka Kaul (professor of ancient history, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University)The modern-yet-ancient Niti story told by Rakesh Kaul both preserves and revives the "story" of Kashmir itself.
Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir is blessed with some amazing
pratibha of his own having inexplicable insights into the ancient yogic science preserved by the Kashmiri Pandits so many centuries ago in texts . . . Yet, the story of Dawn is one of universal Awakening that pertains to all and is not limited to Kashmir. In praising the omnipresence of
Maha, he proclaims that the role of the Kashmiri Pandit is to preserve the collective memory of the great awakening that occurred in Kashmir for the sake of all beings. - Christopher Tompkins (scholar of Kashmir, University of California, Berkeley)
