I Finished Reading all Ponniyin Selvan Books [1-6] :D
OK, I did not read all the six Ponniyin Selvan novels. But I finished listening to all of them – thanks to Storytel‘s wonderful audiobook subscription platform 🙂
If you remember, I listened to the first book in this historical fiction series based on Raja Raja Cholan’s dynasty succession drama [Chola Empire – 10th Century] way back in 2016. That was an English translated edition available on Google Play Books and I used the Android text-to-speech to listen to it.
Even that type of uninspiring robotic narration made me glued to the story because of the masterful storytelling abilities of Kalki, the author.
Recently I signed up for Storytel’s unlimited subscription plan [audiobooks and ebooks] mainly to listen to business-related books, biographies, and other non-fiction audiobooks.
To my surprise, I found they not only had audiobooks in Tamil but they had the entire Ponniyin Selvan series [Books 1 to 6] professionally narrated and recorded by various voice actors with background music and even songs!
Before 4.5 years, only the first book was available in English. But I remembered almost the entire story, so I directly began listening from the second book onwards. This time in Tamil.
These five books run for approximately 60 hours, and I finished them all within 15-days. It was simply unputdownable!! I mean, unpauseable 🙂
I think Ponniyin Selvan should be one of the best historical fiction novels ever written. Not that I routinely read historical fiction, but reading this series has piqued my interest in this genre.
My Best Moment:
I will choose three best moments from this book –
- Introduction of Ponniyin Selvan (Arul Mozhi Varman) in the second half of the second book. Ya, one of the heroes of this series is introduced so late, but what an introduction that was!
- The humorous chiding of Ponniyin Selvan by Vanathi and the stomach burn of Samudrakumari (I think this was at the end of the 3rd book) – you’ve got to smile there 🙂
- The dying moments of Periya Pazhuvettayiar in the 6th book. Actually, the book is too engaging right from the middle of the fifth book.
This Could’ve been better:
- The final-half of the sixth book was unnecessary. But I liked the climax though.
- There is some repetition in many places. Maybe the author had to do this because the story was released as a series of shorts in a magazine for over 3.5 years during the 1950s.
Destination Infinity
PS: It takes some maturity to read and appreciate classics. If you are still young or young-at-heart, you better stick to romance, thriller, or sci-fi/fantasy 😉
History is always interesting. It gives a perspective to the present day.
Sometimes it makes us realize that the motivations and results are the same at any point in time!
Destination Infinity
Long pending in my bucket list to read Ponniyin selvan…but audio book is something new… Not sure how the experience will be !
This audiobook that I listened to in Storytel is really good. They have background music, songs, etc. in addition to different narrators used for different characters.
Destination Infinity
I heard a movie based on this novel is coming soon. I will watch it if they release in other languages. Must be an interesting story. Is the story factual or more fiction based?
Yes, I think a Hindi version will also be released. Not sure how well they can manage to make this epic into a movie – even if in parts. I hope for the best,
Rajesh K