‘Only a great scholar like Wendy Doniger could bring together 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 Ka and Ardor

From Shakuntala to Scheherazade to Marilyn Monroe, from Ancient India and Greece to Medieval Europe to modern cinema, sexual desire and jewellery, particularly rings, have been very often connected.

Why do jewels keep appearing in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true (or, as the case may be, untrue) love across the world?

In this dazzling work of scholarship and insight, Wendy Doniger answers these questions and more, as she shifts between Sanskrit and Greek epics, the plays of Kalidasa and Shakespeare, fairy tales and folklore, Hollywood films and pop songs.

The Ring of Truth is an illuminating and supremely entertaining examination of the enduring power of myth through stories—told across the world and over centuries—about jewels, romance and sex.