The Mauryan Emperor Ashoka has attracted the attention of scholars and laypersons with access to formal education for nearly two centuries since his ‘rediscovery’ in the 1830s. Nayanjot Lahiri’s work is the latest in a long, rich and diverse series of biographies of the ruler. It is significant as being the first major reassessment of Ashoka by a historian of ancient India in the twentyfirst century, also because it is explicitly meant for a general audience, and attempts to move, remarkably successfully, beyond a dry academic narrative.
October 2015, volume 39, No 10