Emperor Chandragupta is the story of a youth who must fight against all odds – within and without – to become one of the greatest emperors ever known. This is the story of Chandragupta Maurya.

Building an empire is not easy, especially when there are enemies everywhere and no one you can trust. India, 326 BCE. The world’s greatest conqueror, Alexander, the Greek emperor, is at its doorstep, having arrived at the Indus seeking to establish his dominion over the entire known world. In the east lies Magadha, ruled by the Nandas, a dynasty driven by greed, lust and hunger for power. From the embers of that lust and avarice a boy has been born, raised by a tribe of peacock-tamers – a boy named Moriya forced by the Nanda clan to be on the run. Aided by Chanakya, a political strategist at odds with his former rulers, who trains him in the ways of the world and christens him Chandragupta, the young man ventures across the vast Magadhan empire to form an army of his own and seek out the foreign invader. But being a warrior prince, he finds, comes at a heavy price – assassins appointed by the Nanda kings will stop at nothing to eliminate him, a rival prince seeks revenge through cruelty and friends are no longer what they seem…

The excerpt runs from page 153 to page 155.  Read excerpt

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Excerpted from ‘Emperor Chandragupta’ written by Adity Kay, published by Hachette.

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About the Author

Adity Kay has nurtured a secret love for history all through her years of working as editor in a magazine, a human resources professional and a management consultant. She has lived in various places in India and has been as much of a border-crosser in her career as a writer, writing editorials, essays, stories for children and books for older readers across genres. Her eclectic reading in history – across non-fiction and fiction – and have led to her fascination with the varied possibilities of times past and has also served as an impetus to travel to long-ago worlds, if only through fiction.