Shashi Tharoor, who was born in India in 1956, is both a politician and a writer. In The Great Indian Novel published in English in 1989, he plays at leisure with the identities of his characters. Indeed, he subverts the Mahabhârata, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism, to make it the backcloth of the story of V. V., his main character who happens to be a retired contemporary Indian politician. So, all characters, including the main character, is defined with reference to three identities: a fictional identity, a mythological identity (every character of this novel being the modernized version of a hero of the Mahabâratha) but also a historical identity (every character bearing resemblance with a political figure involved in India’s independence)