Ramakrishna Ramesh Menon (born 20 September 1951) is an Indian writer, primarily as a translator.
He has written several literary renderings in modern English prose of classical works from the ancient Hindu tradition.
His books include:
– all published by Rupa Publications.
All his main books, apart from the latest Complete Mahabharata series (finished in September 2017), have gone into many reprints in India.
Born in New Delhi, Menon studied at St Xavier's High School and St Stephen's College, where he read history honours (1968–69) and then philosophy honours (1969–70), but left college without taking a degree.
Reading the Bhagavad Gita at this time was a life-changing experience for him. It was the seed from which all his later work emerged.[citation needed]
He developed an informal guru-sishya relationship with the Malayalam novelist O. V. Vijayan, and translated two of his master's novels into English: The Infinity of Grace[1] (Penguin) and Madhuram Gayathi (yet to be published by Vijayan's estate after his death in 2005).[citation needed]
In addition to Delhi, Menon has lived and worked in Bangalore, Chennai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kodaikanal and Thiruvananthapuram.
In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews described his Ramayana as "A masterpiece made new for a generation of readers who ought to be very grateful indeed to Menon".[2]
British theatre director Peter Brook called the book A beautiful new rendering of an inexhaustible theme.[3]
His two-volume rendering of The Mahabharata is his most read and reviewed book.
