Dr Devika Rangachari is an award-winning writer whose book, Queen of Ice (Duckbill), was on the White Raven list, won the Neev Book Award for Young Adults and has been optioned to be made into a movie/television series.
Her other books include 10 Indian Monarchs Whose Amazing Stories You May Not Know, Tales of Love and Adventure, Swami Vivekananda-A Man with a Vision, Harsha Vardhana, The Merry Mischief of Gopal Bhand, The Wit of Tenali Raman and Growing Up (on the 2002 IBBY Honour List). She is currently the recipient of a prestigious national fellowship awarded by the ministry of culture to research aspects of gender and historical fiction in Indian children's literature. Devika recently completed her postdoctoral research on gender in Indian history. Her published thesis is entitled From Obscurity to Light: Women in Early Medieval Orissa (Seventh to Twelfth Centuries ad). Her doctoral research was published under the title Invisible Women, Visible Histories: Gender, Society and Polity in North India (Seventh to Twelfth Century ad).
'I am Prithvimahadevi, the goddess of the earth.'
Prithvimahadevi is the daughter of the powerful Somavamshi king of Kosala. Her life is circumscribed by the rules that govern the existence of women of her royal family. She can only hope that she will marry a king whose power matches that of her ambitious father.
Instead she is married to her father's enemy, the Bhaumakara ruler, Shubhakaradeva, whose way of life she finds alien and austere, and who worships strange gods. There seems to be no hope for her to fulfil her dreams of becoming a great queen-until suddenly one day, there is . . . But is she willing to play the game of sacrifice and betrayal that this will entail?
The story of this ninth-century queen of Odisha by award-winning historical novelist Devika Rangachari will keep you riveted.
