Excerpts from The Believer: Ancient to the Future

How director Mani Ratnam managed to adapt Ponniyin Selvan, a 2,500-page serialized historical epic and one of the bestselling Tamil novels of all time.

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Dear Believers, come gather ’round the flames of the hearth as I spin the adventurous tale of Kalki Krishnamurthy—shamelessly adopting his intimately omniscient tone in order to illuminate his prodigious life and work. Ramaswamy “Kalki” Krishnamurthy was an Indian freedom fighter who was imprisoned three times by the British...