Sadhana

Sadhana Deb is a pen name chosen in honour of the author’s mother, whose name it carries.

Under this name, Sadhana Deb writes mythological fiction centred on women whose lives have often been remembered through the ambitions, judgments and legends of others. Her novels return to familiar stories not to dismantle their wonder, but to look more closely at the human beings beneath it: their desires, silences, compromises, anger and choices.

Shakuntala is her first novel, reimagining one of India’s most enduring women not merely as the abandoned beloved of legend, but as a daughter, lover, mother and woman determined to retain ownership of her own story.

Her fiction explores mythology through an intimate, contemporary emotional lens while remaining rooted in the cultural world from which these stories emerged.