BOOK ONE of the Taj Mahal Trilogy
BOOK TWO: The Feast of Roses BOOK THREE: Shadow Princess
- The novels of the Taj Trilogy are more or less self-contained; you can read out of order, but preferably, read in order.
Synopsis
IN THE WINTER OF 1577, a young Persian nobleman fled his homeland, heading east toward India and the glittering Mughal court of Emperor Akbar. Ghias Beg was not traveling light. He had with him a pregnant wife, and three small children. When the family stopped at Qandahar, his wife gave birth to a baby girl. He named her Mehrunnisa, ‘Sun of Women.’
Thirty-four years later, this child, born during a winter storm in a nomadic encampment, became Akbar’s son, Emperor Jahangir’s twentieth wife—and consequently, the most powerful woman in the Mughal Empire that built the Taj Mahal in India.
Emperor Jahangir, who married nineteen times for political purposes, chose his twentieth—the lovely Mehrunnisa—for love, when she was considered old by Mughal standards. It was not an easy choice. By then, her father had embezzled money from the imperial treasury, and one of her brothers had attempted to assassinate the emperor. But, Mehrunnisa had always battled against the odds, almost abandoned at birth, trapped in a loveless first marriage, with a fierce ambition burning within during a time when women lived behind a veil, not seen, rarely heard.
Meticulously researched and steeped in history, The Twentieth Wife is an intimate glimpse into 17th Century India, and the imperial Mughal harem, where women wielded a hidden power with the skill of astute diplomats, and one of Emperor Jahangir’s wives fought to keep Mehrunnisa out of the zenana and Jahangir’s affections.
