HYDERABAD: Over the past few years, one may have noticed an influx of books on the historic or mythological genres which are reworked with new twists and turns to be consumed with exceeding alacrity by the readers. Be it the ‘Shiva trilogy’, The ‘Chanakya’s Chant’ or the newest to join the bandwagon is Christopher C doyle’s ‘The Mahabharata Quest: The Alexander Secret’, which weaves the story of history and modern day science together into a novel that transports you into a different realm.
Fascinated by history and ancient epics since childhood, author Christopher C Doyle debuted with his novel ‘The Mahabharata Secret’ in 2013. Following that, he has now rolled out his second novel ‘The Mahabharata Quest: The Alexander Secret’, the first part of a trilogy.
The seed for writing a book was planted by his seven-year-old who had grown bored of the fairytales and fantasy novels she was reading. “She wanted something more challenging. As she was very interested in mythology and history, I started looking for stories that I could narrate to her in a simple language,” recalls Christopher. As someone, who had always been interested in history, Christopher gave form to a thought he had when he was reading ‘The Hindu History’ by Akshay Majumdar in 1999 and began writing his first novel. “Majumdar creates an alternate hsitory of pre-historic India around 4000BC. It had all these genealogies of the Suryavanshis and the Chandravanshis. He also talks about the possibility of the gods and goddesses like Shiva, Durga who were real human beings who were then actually elevated to immortal status. I wanted to see whether I can somehow manage to interpret all this through a scientific angle,” opines the St Stephen’s alumni. And so started the extensive and time consuming research for his first novel which involved reading heavy tomes of material on Greek and Indian mythologies while juxtaposing it with a modern day interpretation.
“The material and research for the second book was drawn from the works I read while working on the first novel. ‘Finger Prints of God by Graham Hancock was another book which I read,” adds Christopher who lives in Gurgaon.
But with a book that tackles complex scientific theories, does he think that some of it may go over the reader’s heads? “The science I have used in the second book is far more complex which also makes it more credible. I would say I have tried very hard not to do that. Readers say I have managed to convey a complex subject in simple form, reasonably well. I’m explaining the Sanskrit shlokas can be translated scientifically one by one in the book, for which I asked scholars.” Work aside, Christopher is also a musician and is a vocalist for the band Mid Life Crisis.