Doniger's exploration of the ring's symbolism as a manacle that binds a woman to a man is particularly insightful, as is her witty deconstruction of the modern myth of the diamond engagement ring that proves to have much more to do with savvy marketing than any enduring romantic tradition.
Library Journal
Reading Wendy Doniger's book is not unlike ... Read morereading Don Quixote, with all its familiar adventures peppered with memorable detours of love, adultery, and the foibles of jealous husbands and clever wives. She leaps easily from Sanskrit fables to Roman times, from medieval lore to the eighteenth-century French Court and modern Doris Day movies, landing wherever she wishes with her characteristic supreme knowledge of 'anytime and anywhere' and her contagious preoccupation with Sex.
Francis Ford Coppola
Only a great scholar like Wendy Doniger could bring together Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Siegfried, Shakuntala and Marie Antoinette, Solomon and Shakespeare and so many others with such ease and lucidity in an endlessly mesmerizing ring.
Roberto Calasso, author of Ardor
Why did I read this book, so passionately glued to it, hardly taking a break? The tales and the connections, the inner working of the layers of each tale kept working on my mind and my body. Wonder and amazement were the determining qualities of the book. I never stopped wondering what the next sentence would say, and the next tale would tell.
Velcheru Narayana Rao, Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Chair in Telugu Culture, Literature, and History, Emory University
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