The Twentieth Wife

Oh I found a good book! Don't you love it when you come across a book that you just devour and then stare blankly at the final page, wishing there were more?

I came back from India desperate for more of the country, with random lines of Kipling floating through my brain, O Best Beloved. (And here I should say that if you haven't yet read the Jungle Books or Just So Stories you cannot leave this life without doing so. To say the language is gorgeous is an understatement of elephantine proportions).

But we're not talking Kipling today folks. When I asked her for books on India my mother gave me a novel by Indu Sundaresan called The Twentieth Wife and I absolutely loved it. Historical fiction has always been my favorite genre so to find a historical novel about India was just what I was craving.

India's history goes back five thousand years with various groups coming in and adding to the culture but the Mughals were the rulers that essentially brought Islam to India. They ruled across the north and in what is now Pakistan then down into the Deccan plateau which is where we traveled. Descended from Genghis Khan himself, there were six major emperors--Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb--with the Mughal rule ending with British control of the subcontinent. For quite a time the Mughal empire was the biggest and richest in the entire world.

You're probably familiar already with one of these rulers, Shah Jahan, who was most famous for the love he had for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth with their 14th child. In tribute to her--the story goes--he built the Taj Mahal as her mausoleum.

But enough history. The point is, The Twentieth Wife tells the true story of Mehrunnisa, a commoner who becomes the Empress of India, the famous Nur Jahan, and the power behind the peacock throne during the early 17th century. Royal intrigue, love, romance, tragedy, torture, power and lust--it's all there in abundance--and while much of Mehrunnisa's early life and personality is conjecture, the story is founded in fact as recorded in her husband Jahanagir's journals, historical accounts and the writings of visitors to the Indian court.

In a time when women were kept from power and authority, Nur Jahan was intelligent, powerful and rich and not only influenced her husband in a way no other empress had before but she had merchant ships and properties and wealth beyond most men of court and was a shrewd businesswoman.

The story is interesting and the details transporting (I got very excited when they mentioned Golkonda Fort where we spent a few hours baking in the heat last month) and it's as exciting a story as you could want with all the exotic flavors of curry, jasmine and mangoes.

One of the things I particularly liked about the book--besides the fact that it's uncommonly clean--is that each chapter is headed with a paragraph from the actual historical documents upon which the story is based. Some are from court transcriptions, some from poetry and prose, some from English historians visiting the empire but all giving the real words of those who knew the Empress and knew her story and it gives the narrative a touch of authenticity.

I'm starting the sequel that continues Nur Jahan's story--The Feast of Roses--and if it's as good as the first book I'll be reading the last book in the trilogy, The Shadow Princess, which picks up the story with Nur Jahan's grand-neice after her mother Mumtaz Mahal dies in childbirth.

Now if only I could get Sundaresan to write books as fast as I can read them. . . .

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