Indu Sundaresan Books In Order

Taj Mahal Trilogy Books In Publication Order

  1. The Twentieth Wife (2002)
  2. The Feast of Roses (2003)
  3. Shadow Princess (2010)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Splendor of Silence (2006)
  2. The Mountain of Light (2013)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. In the Convent of Little Flowers (2008)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Hotel Angeline (2011)

Taj Mahal Trilogy Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Indu Sundaresan Books Overview

The Twentieth Wife

An enchanting seventeenth century epic of grand passion and adventure, this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India’s most legendary and controversial empresses a woman whose brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles, and whose love shaped the course of the Mughal empire. 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. Skillfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensuous imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps readers up in the emotional pageant of Salim and Mehrunnisa’s embattled love. First time novelist Indu Sundaresan charts her hero*ine’s enthralling journey across the years, from an ill fated first marriage through motherhood and into a dangerous maze of power struggles and political machinations. Through it all, Mehrunnisa and Salim long with fiery intensity for the true, redemptive love they’ve never known and their mutual quest ultimately takes them, and the vast empire that hangs in the balance, to places they never dreamed possible. Shot through with wonder and suspense, The Twentieth Wife is at once a fascinating portrait of one woman’s convention defying life behind the veil and a transporting saga of the astonishing potency of love.

The Feast of Roses

The love story of Emperor Jahangir and Mehrunnisa, begun in the critically praised debut novel The Twentieth Wife, continues in Indu Sundaresan’s The Feast of Roses. This lush new novel tells the story behind one of the great tributes to romantic love and one of the seven wonders of the world the Taj Mahal. Mehrunnisa, better known as Empress Nur Jahan, comes into Jahangir’s harem as his twentieth and last wife. Almost from the beginning of her royal life she fits none of the established norms of womanhood in seventeenth century India. Mehrunnisa is the first woman Jahangir marries for love, at the ‘old’ age of thirty four. He loves her so deeply that he eventually transfers his powers of sovereignty to her. Power and wealth do not come easily to Mehrunnisa she has to fight for them. She has a formidable rival in the imperial harem, Empress Jagat Gosini, who has schemed and plotted against Mehrunnisa from early on. Mehrunnisa’s problems do not just lie within the harem walls, but at court, too, as she battles powerful ministers for supremacy. These ministers, who have long had Emperor Jahangir’s confidence and trust, consider Mehrunnisa a mere woman who cannot have a voice in the outside world. Mehrunnisa combats all of this by forming a junta of sorts with three men she can rely on her father, her brother, and Jahangir’s son Prince Khurram. She demonstrates great strength of character and cunning to get what she wants, sometimes at a cost of personal sorrow when she almost loses her daughter’s love. But she never loses the love of the man who bestows this power upon her Emperor Jahangir. The Feast of Roses is a tale of this power and love, the story of power behind a veil.

Shadow Princess

International bestseller, pens an epic novel based on fact about princesses fighting for power and respect in India’s 17th Century royal court.

The Splendor of Silence

When Sam Hawthorne, a twenty five year old U.S. Army captain, arrives at the princely state of Rudrakot in May of 1942, it is on a personal quest to find his missing brother. But Sam’s mission is soon threatened by the unlikeliest of sources he falls hopelessly in love with Mila, daughter of the local political agent. And Mila, unexpectedly attracted to Sam, finds herself torn between loyalty to her family and the man she loves. A sweeping and poignant story of forbidden love, The Splendor of Silence opens twenty one years later with Olivia, Sam’s daughter, receiving a trunk of treasures from India, along with an anonymous letter that finally fills the silences of her childhood. She finally learns the heartrending story of her parents’ passionate and enduring love affair throwing them in the path of racial prejudice, nationalist intrigue, and the explosive circumstances of a country on the brink of independence from British rule.

In the Convent of Little Flowers

Bestselling author Indu Sundaresan presents a candid and stunning collection of stories about contemporary Indians and the cutting edge issues surrounding them where ancient tradition and modernity can often clash.

A young woman who was adopted by an American family in Seattle receives a letter from Sister Mary Theresa, nun at the Convent of Little Flowers in Chennai where she stayed as a child. Unbeknownst to her, the nun is her biological mother’s sister. The grandmother of an Indian journalist begs him to intervene with her husband his grandfather to prevent a young widow from being burned alive. A child born out of wedlock to the sixteen year old daughter of a peon on an engineering college campus throws the entire family into turmoil.

With the lush prose, vividly rendered settings, complex and appealing characters, and compelling narratives, the stories that comprise In the Convent of Little Flowers illuminate the lives of Indians at home and abroad today, where modernity offers them opportunities that their grandmothers only dreamed of, while others experience just as much oppression as ever. Indu Sundaresan brings together stories that both embrace and reject modern values with an authenticity that only a writer of her caliber could do.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment