The Books

Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. Whilst her classmates are jetting off to exotic places, she'll be at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture where her mother works. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, travelling to Paris, and having a chauffeur? When Aru's schoolmates dare her to prove that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, she doesn't think there's any harm in lighting it. Little does Aru know that lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Accompanied by a wise-cracking pigeon and her long-lost half-sister, she must find the reincarnations of the five Pandava brothers and journey through the Kingdom of Death. But how is one girl in Spider-Man pyjamas supposed to do all that?