Even as a child, Sambhaji has known he must stand alone. His mother died when he was barely two, and his father was always absent—chasing his own dream of ‘Swaraj’, fighting to keep the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at bay. As the eldest son, Sambhaji is the true heir to Shivaji. He is valorous, wise and has the makings of a capable statesman. But there are dark forces at play in the palace. Shivaji’s other queen, Soyrabai, is scheming to place her son Rajaram on the throne, and she has the support of several ministers whose misdemeanours Sambhaji is determined to expose. On 3 April 1680, Shivaji dies unexpectedly, and it is finally time for Sambhaji to rise to the challenge. He must now fight Aurangzeb, who has spent twenty years trying to smoke out the ‘mountain rat’, and whose presence in the Deccan poses an increasingly grave threat to the Maratha empire. And what could be better than the enemy’s own brother-in-law willing to hand him the rat on a platter.

A moving portrait of an often misunderstood braveheart, Vishwas Patil’s Sambhaji is a massive bestseller that has sold over a 100,000 copies in Marathi. Cinematic and ambitious in its scope, this is a keenly researched and splendidly executed period drama about one man’s struggle to preserve his father’s legacy and of the price extracted by the throne and the homeland.