Myth and Modernity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions: A Critical Analysis

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, one of the most acknowledged diasporic writers, subtly re-interprets Indian ethos through the characters of her fictions. One of the major issues of her novels is cultural identity. The conflicts or the balances, which ensue from the existential dilemma, can be evidently traced in the fictional worlds she creates through her works. The Palace of Illusions and The Forest of Enchantment are some of the works that have made Divakaruni an acclaimed author of the contemporary times. This paper aims to illustrate the relationship between myth and modernity in her novel The Palace of Illusions. The novel is a modern retelling of the Indian epic The Mahabharata in an imaginative and iconoclastic manner. The central character Draupadi has been reconstituted with new perspectives and portrayed to be free of traditional orientations. In the novel, she explores the conjugation of myth and modernity through the persona of Draupadi, making her the protagonist and narrator of the story.