Lelobooks Excerpt: Bringing back a Central Asian legend: The Song of King Gesar by Alai

Penned down by Alai and translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin,  The Song of King Gesari is a classic 12th century Tibetan epic restated as a new tale, highlights the aspects of humans of the demi-God Gesar and brilliantly mark outs the contours of his expedition.

This epic novel is believed to be written around the 12th century and the book tells the heroic deeds of a cultural hero of the region of Tibet, Gesar, who is considered as the fearless God of the renowned kingdom of Gling. The epic has been sung widely all across the Central Asia and also has been used in different kinds of prose and poetry. Composed of a huge body, this epic has also has been reputed as the longest in the world. The author has done a great job in condensing this great epic and compiling it in a novel and has used the form of a dual narrative and focuses on being able to understand the psyche of Gesar while he and the environment around him, which brings changes upon the outer space.  

 

In the book, the author has put in efforts to trace the life and journey of King Gesar, during the tenure when he used to be known as Thosba Gawa  (the son of the deities) to the period when he used to make mistakes and thereafter created a country along with fighting battles against the king of Ging.

The is a common line that is found in all the epics and mythological books from all across the world  (be it the Mahabharata, Odyssey, or the Iliad) that it is mandatory of having clashes and struggle between the good and the evil and when talking about this Tibetan Epic, the element is in a more subjective manner.

 The novel describes all about the missions and visions of King Gesar as stated the first and the foremost mission of Gesar, commanded by the celestial kingdoms which was to destroy the demons from the world of humans and make peace in the world. In the process the king fights countless kings and princes, no matter if these are close to him or not. Another similarity which author has stated in the novel with other epics of the world is the role of women in the males’ lives and these women have always played an important role in the decisions of the kings. Despite of all these similarities with the other epics of the world, this Tibetan novel has shown its uniqueness and has stated that it is different from them in its own way.

Even though, the novel dates to around 12th century, yet the author has done a great job in

Narrating the story and directly takes its readers to the period when the things were actually happening.

Like in Mahabharata, this epic also has a storyteller called as Grungkan and the character has been interestingly developed and struggles with the dilemma of fulfilling his job and duty on one side and on the other side understanding the context with a contemporary sense. With the turning of the pages, you can see an in depth growth in the characters of the novel such as King Gesar, Gyatsa Zhakhar, Brugmo, Khortung etc and the author has projected their psyche in the text in considerably a mature way.

 The epic is hard to criticize as has an intriguing story which interests the readers and preaches them, yet the novel has little problem with the translation as originally it has been written in Tibetan and thereafter it has been translated into English. The reader may find out some of the flaws like the change of pace and there are some sudden shifts in the narration of the story with unperturbed glitches, but it is to mention that these are all translation errors only.

In order to read this epic novel, which has shown the creativity of Alai, who has narrated the story which will take you into a fantasy escapade, just place your  order at lelobooks, while indulging in online book shopping and avail great discount offers! Hurry Now!