" There is no hero without a villain " - Mark Pellegrino


If you ever wondered how the Biggest villain, the Mighty and powerful King of  Lanka Raavan was made, where he was born, how was his childhood, and what caused him to become one of the evil people of ancient India that people still burn his statue in Vijayadashami Ravan Dahan, then today is your lucky break as this book of Amish Tripathi answers them all.

In this blog, we are going to review the sixth book of Amishverse and the third book of the Ram Chandra Series -Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta.


My Rating -  ★★★★★

Publisher - Westland Ltd

Genre - Mythological Fiction

Publishing year - 2017

Language -English

ISBN - 9789356290976

Pages - 331



My Review 

"Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories". 

This line perfectly fits the life of Raavan, the first child of Maharishi Vishrava. He was born a Naga and was kept secret from his tribe. He was disliked by his father and when his brother Kumbhakarna was also born a Naga and he had to fight his father's followers to save his baby brother, it acted like the final nail in the coffin. He left his father's ashram with his mother, brother and maternal uncle Mareech. After being forsaken by his maternal family, he travels to the southern part of India with a determination to become the most powerful person in the world.

He became a smuggler at the tender age of ten to provide for his mother and brother. He looted the wealth of the governor of childlike to start a business in trading. Ultimately he took the control of trade in Lanka and became the general of Kuber, the King of Lanka. The journey of Raavan from a mere smuggler to a king is written splendidly by Amish. 

 The people of India become aware of Raavan's strength and brilliant mind when he defeats King Dashrath at the battle of Karachapa. He became ruthless day by day and at last, he dethroned King Kuber to become king of Lanka.

The finest part of this book is the way Amish showed the two contrasting sides of Raavan's character.
 
On one side, his love for books and literature and his thirst to get knowledge. He also loved his brother and in turn, his brother was very loyal to him. His unconditional Love for Kanyakumari, whose name and whereabouts he didn't know but worshipped her and even when he found out she is married, he didn't try to persuade her to leave her husband. Kanyakumari advised her to adopt the path of wisdom and he getting agreed to that.

On the other hand, he was a ruthless and power-hungry person. When Kanyakumari and her husband were killed by the village leader's son, he killed the entire village and left them to be eaten by animals. He imposed very harsh trade laws on Sapt Sindhu and drained them completely of wealth. His hatred for her mother is also very profoundly shown in the book. He also wanted people to accept him as a living god. After he was not given the first chance in Sita Swayamvar, he tried to destroy the entire city.

All thing considered, this book tries and succeed in very much depicting the life of Raavan and get the reader occupied on every page and is one of the books, you can't simply ignore 😊