Extra Credit Reading Notes

The Palace of Illusions:

The front cover of the book

How do I even begin to decipher the response that I have to this book. I am only 43 pages into this now, having just been able to finally pick up the novel to read it. 

The story is written from Draupadi's first person narrative and I am just so very thrilled to read each page. I am hungry to read more pages and am ever grateful that the professor suggested this book to me. I am doing my storybook from Draupadi's first person narrative and had decided on that very thing before I had known about this book. It is already helping me frame ideas for my own project.

I also feel that the book illustrates beautifully the mundane and unregarded facets of existence that happen to be excluded from the Mahabharata. There are details of culture and time//space//relevance that I simply would not have considered beforehand. Now, with those passages in draw explanation, I better understand the spooky intrigue of fortune-telling. Wow, was the description of Draupadi's future so immersive and compelling! 

Bibliography: Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions,  A first-person narrative of Draupadi's life telling, a heroine in the Mahabharata.