Young Chintamani Dev Gupta, on holiday in a bird camp near Lake Sattal, is transported via a wormhole to the days of the Mahabharata. Trapped in time, he meets Ghatotkacha and his mother, the demoness Hidimba. But the gentle giant, a master of illusion and mind-boggling rakshasa technology, wields his strength just as well as he knows the age-old secrets of the forest and the elemental forces. And in his enlightening company, Chintamani finds himself in the thick of the events of the most enduring Indian epic.

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Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher and director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She is the author of 16 works of fiction and non-fiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. The recent Things to Leave Behind, the third in her Himalayan trilogy , has been described as her most ambitious novel yet. Other books include, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows, Shakuntala: the Play of Memory, The Book of Shiva, In Search of Sita and the edited anthology Himalaya. Her latest work of fiction, Lost in Time, Ghatotkacha and the Game of Illusions, is a novel for young readers. The Himalayan Arc – East of South East, an anthology of writings on the eastern Himalayas, will be released in January 2018. She is also one of the founder directors of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialising in translation.