Ponniyin Selvan - Part 6 [The Son of Ponni, Part 6]

By: Kalki

Narrated by: Bombay Kannan

Ponniyin Selvan is a historical novel by Kalki Krishnamurthy, written in Tamil. In five volumes, it tells the story of early days of Arulmozhivarman, who later became the great Chola emperor Rajaraja Chola I. The book took more than three years to write; Kalki visited Sri Lanka three times to gather information for it.

Ponniyin Selvan is widely considered by many to be the greatest novel ever written in Tamil literature. It was first published as a series in the Kalki, a Tamil language magazine, during the 1950s and was later integrated into a novel. The craze for the series, which was published weekly, was such that it elevated the magazine circulation to reach a staggering figure of 71,366 copies - no mean achievement in a newly independent India.

Even today, the novel has a cult following and fan base among people of all generations. The book continues to be admired and garner critical acclaim for its tightly woven plot and vivid narration, the wit of the dialogue, and the way in which the power struggle and intrigues of the Chola empire were depicted.

Please note: This audiobook is in Tamil.

©1951 Nationalised (P)2019 Pustaka Digital Media Pvt. Ltd.

Greatest historical fiction ever written

The plot, script, dialogues, character development is all beyond great. Must read in your lifetime

One of the best stories I’ve read

This story is one of the best stories I’ve read in any language. Simply amazed by Kalkis story telling and creativity in weaving historical facts into such a brilliant and interesting fiction. Listened to all the 6 parts back to back within a month of watching PS1 movie! A must read.

Have to mention these two cons though:
1. Music : overwhelming in many places and doesn’t really go with what is being narrated. Singers - is there such a dearth for good singers in Tamil Nadu ? Not even one song was sung in proper sruthi start to end.
2. Tamil pronunciation : ள and ல mixed up by so many speakers - the worst was the person that spoke sendhan amudhan. Whenever that character spoke I was cringing.

But overall - it was great, highly recommend this series to all story lovers.

My first and Best Tamil book

I started listening to this series after I saw the movie PS-1. Listening to it at the play speed of 1.4, the voice of each character very much reminded me of the actors in the movie.

The story, the characters and the narration all are incredible. It is hard to stop listening at the end of any chapter, even if the time reads 3 am. The mind says just one more chapter and the loop continues.

Amazing.... can't imagine how people felt when it was released in parts over the years.

V.Good voice actors with the worst possible music

Kudos for rendering this great book in this format. As great as the acting cast was, they really messed up with the music score. They used music scores from Batman, Lord of the rings etc straight up . It’s just so bizarre. Music is complete unrelated to the scene and setting most of the time (a normal scene will have tense Batman music playing). I would pay extra to get this audio book with absolutely no music in it - would have had an infinitely better experience. The music keeps taking you away from the story - it was just so frustrating. It’s a pity that such a good voice acting performance was spoiled by terrible music production

review of the audiobook production.

In the face of such magnificant writing, all you to have to do is merely narrate. Everything else is a mere distraction that takes away from the beauty of ponniyin selvan.

The producers of this audiobook seem to be highly confused as to what the final outcome should be. It looks like they couldn't decide if the end product should be an audiobook, a theatre play or an audiomovie. As a result, the sum total is worse than the sum of its parts.

The audiobook features multiple narrators narrating different characters. For the most part, the main narrator does an extremely good job and had it just been him without the background accessories, this would have been a decent effort. The quality of narration wavers from quite good to really bad. The exaggerated laughter performed by the narrators are often totally uncalled for and can even get annoying at times.


But the biggest bane of this book is its music. The book contains several songs which has been sung with music in the audiobook. The singing barring those of Senthan Amudhan is quite mediocre. The composer perhaps is more at fault than the singers for this I suppose. Kalki wrote a beautiful song for Manimeghalai in this book. The author felt it was so important that she sang the song again at the very end of book at a defining moment. The composer has completely butchered that song. especially the second time at the climax. Manimeghalai is supposed to sing the song with melancholy. The composer instead made it out to be what is called in tamil as "oppari". If that wasn't enough, the background score for the books feature original soundtracks lifted from movies like the lord of the rings trilogy, avatar, titanic, bravheart, the mummy and several more. Why take the trouble to add background music to narration and then lift music elsewhere when you can simply narrate the book. what is more is that for some reason the producers felt they could let the music play on at the ends of each chapter for some dramatic effect and the extended pause of narration seems to get longer and longer with each book. This was extremely annoying when the pause goes on and on at critical moments which are abound in ponniyin selvan.

When I first got to know that ponniyin selvan audiobooks are finally being made, I was overjoyed. after listening to this production, I am somewhat disappointed. Please, just stick to narrating. I will look for other much simpler productions of the rest of kalki's books. If it was only Bombay Kannan and the other main characters narrating their parts, this would have been a magnificent production of a truly timeless epic.