Pillai's novel which bagged several awards including the Tata Literature Live! Best Debut (Non-fiction) Prize is a retelling of the life and work of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last queen of the House of Travancore

Arka Mediaworks, the studio behind the Baahubali franchise, is set to take to the screen Manu S Pillai's award-winning novel, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore. The production house has optioned an adaptation of Pillai's debut work, which will chronicle the events that unfolded after Vasco da Gama set foot into Kerala.

The novel, which bagged several awards including the Tata Literature Live! Best Debut (Non-fiction) Prize and Yuva Sahitya Akademi Award, is a retelling of the life and work of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last queen of the House of Travancore. It also incorporates characters as dramatic and colourful as the flamboyant painter Raja Ravi Varma, English agents and quarreling consorts.

The story begins in 1498 when the explorer lands on the shores of Kerala in search of spices and plunges the entire region into a cosmopolitan frenzy that threatens to destroy local powers. Pillai, who has also authored the 2018 work Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji, writes of the shrewd prince Martanda Varma in this book, who forms an alliance with the British Raj that leads to two centuries of conflict in what was one of India's first princely states.

The Ivory Throne was published by HarperCollins India in 2015.