#Review: The Renunciation by Pragya Agrawal

The Renunciation
Author: Pragya Agrawal
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Rating: 4/5

The Renunciation steps into Sita’s story not with fanfare, but with a quiet, aching intimacy. The cover, beautifully designed by Amrita Chakravorty and illustrated by Onkar Fondekar, captures this mood perfectly—Sita rendered in warm earth tones, surrounded by a forest that feels both protective and isolating. It sets the emotional register for a retelling that chooses nuance over spectacle.

Pragya Agrawal focuses on the years after Sita’s exile, and the writing—judging by the pages you shared—is tender, observant, and grounded in sensory detail. Her Sita is not a passive figure of devotion but a woman navigating the long aftershocks of abandonment while raising two sons who know nothing of the story that shaped them. There’s an undercurrent of tension running through the narrative: the weight of silence, the inevitability of revelation, and the fire of memory resurfacing at the worst possible moment.

The novel’s strength lies in its emotional honesty. Agrawal doesn’t romanticize Sita’s pain, nor does she reduce it to moral symbolism. Instead, she offers a portrait of a woman trying to reconcile love, duty, and dignity—sometimes gracefully, sometimes rawly.

If there’s a limitation, it’s that some passages linger a bit long on description, but the overall flow remains immersive. This retelling feels less like a mythic chronicle and more like a deeply human story of reckoning, reunion, and resilience.

A thoughtful and evocative revisit of Sita’s world.

Find this book here.