Th e troubled reign of a fourteenth-century sultan of Delhi helps dramatizethe crisis of secular nationhood in post-Independence India. A twelft hcenturyfolktale about 'transposed heads' offers a path-breaking model fora quintessentially 'Indian' theatre in postcolonial times. The folktale abouta woman with a snake lover explores gender relations within marriage.Individual human sexuality meets the historical debate on violence in Indianculture. The plays in this volume span roughly the first half of the career ofGirish Karnad, one of India's pre-eminent playwrights.The three-volume set of Karnad's Collected Plays brings together Englishversions of his important works. Each volume contains an extensiveintroduction by theatre scholar Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, Professorof English and Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin,Madison. The introductions trace the literary and theatrical evolution ofKarnad's work over six decades and position it in the larger context ofmodern Indian drama. In addition, they comment on Karnad's place as authorand translator in a multilingual performance culture and the relation of hisplaywriting to his work in the popular media.