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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The Fire That Starts Everything
Chapter 3: — The Seeds of a City
Chapter 4: — The Foreigner Names the Miracle
Chapter 5: — Brothers, Sisters, and the First Conquests
Chapter 6: — A Mother Disowns Her Sons
Chapter 7: — The Forest of Women
Chapter 8: — The War of Pink Monkeys
Chapter 9: — Krishnadevaraya and the Blinding
Chapter 10: — Talikota and the City of Words
Description
Victory City is a mythic, history-haunted epic framed as the rediscovery of a buried Sanskrit poem: the Jayaparajaya (“Victory and Defeat”). Its author, the prophetess Pampa Kampana, witnesses a horrific act of mass immolation as a child—and is immediately changed by a divine presence that grants her miraculous longevity and world-shaping powers.
From a sack of seeds she helps conjure a new city, Bisnaga (Victory City), then “whispers” its people into full humanity by giving them memories, identities, and histories. Over centuries she becomes founder, queen, lover, exile, revolutionary, regent, and finally blinded chronicler—while kings, priests, foreigners, and factions struggle to claim the city’s soul. The empire’s greatness peaks under a charismatic ruler, then curdles into paranoia, betrayal, and war, until Bisnaga collapses in fire and slaughter, leaving only words to outlast the ruins.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners who love sweeping, myth-infused historical fantasy about empires, destiny, and the price of power.
- Fans of literary epics that blend invented history, political intrigue, and the slippery nature of “truth” in storytelling.
- Readers interested in feminist-inflected narratives about women shaping—and being erased from—history.