Randamoozham

Blurb

Randamoozham is a 1984 Malayalam novel by M. T. Vasudevan Nair. It is widely credited as his masterpiece. It was translated into English as Second Turn in 1997. M. T. Vasudevan Nair won Vayalar Award, given for the best literary work in Malayalam, for the novel in 1985. Later, in the year 1995, he was awarded the highest literary award in India, Jnanpith Award, for his overall contribution to Indian literature. The novel Randamoozham also won the Muttathu Varkey Foundation award.
The novel is set as a retelling of the Indian epic Mahabharata, from the view of Bhima, the second Pandava. The novel starts with Mahaprasthanam, where pandavas renounce their kingdom and other worldly possessions and start the final pilgrimage to Himalayas to enter the heaven in bodily form. The story deviates from the traditional Mahabharata story when Bhima stops to take care of Draupadi during this journey. The author avoids divine elements of the epic in an attempt to portray the story as a real incident that happened in prehistoric India. One reason for the novel's cult following is that this was the first time Malayalam readers experienced revisionism in literature.