The Complete Mahabharata Vol 4 Udyoga ParvaThe Mahabharata of Veda Vyasa is the longest recorded epic of the world. With almost 100,000 verses, it is many times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined and has deeply influenced every aspect of the Indian ethos for some 4,000 years. The main theme is the Great War on Kurukshetra, but the epic teems with smaller stories, and other stories within these, all woven together with a genius that confounds comparison. At its heart, it contains

and split his corporation asunder to protect the source of his vast wealth (on the one side)

Dickie Bow might have tailed his last target

Hours from disaster

leads a novice to the noose

Until Asher

After visiting Trieste for more than half a century she has come to see it as a touchstone for her interests and preoccupations: cities seas empires

The author definitely knows his police stuff'

delicately poised' FT

a region whose prodigious wheat production is rumored to be the product of a deal witha devil

But what she can do is write a series of furious letters to William Thompson

shortly after arriving in Beijing as The Times's China correspondent

Marianna Leivaditaki is a natural storyteller