Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and writer. He has written seventeen highly acclaimed books of non-fiction, which include, among others, The Inner World (now in its sixteenth printing since its first publication in 1978), Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, Intimate Relations, The Colours of Violence and, most recently, Young Tagore: The Makings of a Genius. He has written four novels and his books have been translated into twenty-one languages around the world.
Kakar has taught at leading institutions around the world and has won numerous accolades for his work. In February 2012, he was conferred the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country's highest civilian honour.
A young man from a provincial town, Jalandhar, arrives in the magnificent city of Ujjayini. His astonishing brilliance as a poet is recognized immediately. The formidable young king of Avanti becomes the poet's chief patron. This is the story of Bhartrihari, the greatest Sanskrit poet of love.
The poet's fame grows at fabulous speed; his success is effortless. But the journey of his self is not as smooth: he fluctuates between sexual passion and erotic disenchantment, the appeal of the senses in war with the call of the spirit.
With acute insight and sinuous elegance, Sudhir Kakar's best novel yet, The Devil Take Love, presents in lush detail life in seventh-century cosmopolitan India, while inhabiting the true depths of a poet's mind and superbly evoking his distinctive voice: impassioned, sardonic, dismayed, pensive.
