Description

New York Review Books, paperback

Publication Date:July 12, 2022

Publisher Marketing:Valmiki’sRamayanaprovides the inspiration for this vibrant collection of poems, each of which acts as a persuasive encounter between English poetry and Indian myth.

Afteris a collection of poems inspired by Valmiki’sRamayana,one of Asia’s foundational epic poems and a story-cycle of formative historical importance all across South and Southeast Asia.

On the Indian subcontinent, theRamayanais not only central to religion and folklore but to the conduct of life. People take its characters as models of vice and virtue, courage and devotion, and politicians have been known to take advantage of the veneration in which the book is held. In the West, too, theRamayanahas long been recognized as one of the essentialclassics of world literature, on par with theEpic of Gilgamesh, the Homeric epics, Virgil, and Dante, even as its stories remain comparatively unfamiliar.

InAfterVivek Narayanan brings the resources of contemporary English poetry to bear on Valmiki’sRamayana. In a work that bears comparison with Christopher Logue and Alice Oswald’s distinctive reshapings of Homer, and Anne Carson’sAutobiography of Red, Narayanan allows the ancient voice of the poem to confront and engage with modern experience, initiating a transformative conversation across time.