Up the Creek Book Club
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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
The Twentieth Wife
by Indu Sundaresan
February 2004
Synopsis
"She came into the world in the year 1577, to the howling accompaniment of a ferocious winter storm. As the daughter of starving refugees fleeing violent persecution in Persia, her fateful birth in a roadside tent sparked a miraculous reversal of family fortune, culminating in her father's introduction to the court of Emperor Akbar. She is called Mehrunnisa, the Sun of Women. This is her story."
"Growing up on the fringes of Emperor Akbar's opulent palace grounds, Mehrunnisa blossoms into a sapphire-eyed child blessed with a precocious intelligence, luminous beauty, and a powerful ambition far surpassing the bounds of her family's station. Mehrunnisa first encounters young Prince Salim on his wedding day. In that instant, even as a royal gala swirls around her in celebration of the future emperor's first marriage, Mehrunnisa foresees the path of her own destiny. One day, she decides with uncompromising surety, she too will become Salim's wife. She is all of eight years old - and wholly unaware of the great price she and her family will pay for this dream."
(Publisher)Reviews
- "Good old-fashioned historical fiction...Full of jeweled beauties and crumbling ruins, The Twentieth Wife satisfies every craving for the pomp and mystery of India's past."
(Chicago Tribune)
- "Rich and realistic....A delicious story." (The Seattle Times)
- "If all history lessons were spun outwards from a legendary love affair and enlivened with sensuous details of an exotic time and place, fewer kids would sleep through class." (The Sunday Oregonian)
Book Club Rating and Comments
If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.
Other Books by Indu Sundaresan
- The Feast of Roses