Shadow Princess

December 7, 2009
Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife
) returns to 17th-century India in this romantic fictionalization of the life of Jahanara, the oldest child of the empress Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan's cherished wife. Mumtaz dies in childbirth, leaving four sons, two teenage daughters and a newborn girl. The grief-stricken emperor seeks consolation in the construction of the Taj, the magnificent Luminous Tomb, while the profundity of his mourning exposes his fallibility to his sons, who begin eyeing his throne. Jahanara and her sister Roshanara choose to back different brothers, and they compete to rule in both the royal harem and their father's heart. Before long, Jahanara is the one who succeeds as the emperor's closest confidante, and he refuses to allow her to leave him to marry. Sundaresan has a scholar's fascination with the period; she's at her best describing the opulent court or the construction of the Taj Mahal. Little is known about the actual Jahanara, and Sundaresan has blessed the princess's fictional proxy with such perfection that readers will be tempted to find her flawed siblings not only more believable but also more interesting.

January 1, 2010
When a beloved empress dies, her heartbroken husband builds her a tomb called the Taj Mahal, while her children jostle for power and partners.

Returning to Mughal history, her topic in two previous novels (In the Convent of Little Flowers, 2008, etc.), Sundaresan brings sober devotion to the dynastic tale, which opens with Empress Mumtaz Mahal's death after the birth of her 14th child. The emperor's grief is so great that he is inclined to give up his hard-won throne, but his increasingly influential eldest daughter Jahanara persuades him to continue. Preparations to erect a monument to the empress at Agra are interleaved with royal power struggles; cliffhanging chapter endings attempt to inject drama and suspense. But the story remains flat, buried under masses of research. Readers with a taste for lyrically delivered detail (the jewelry! the palaces! the bed linen! the polo ponies!) will find Sundaresan's word paintings as colorful as Indian miniatures, albeit just as static. Jahanara remains loyal to her father to the end, despite her love for the courtier whose child she bears. A late power struggle among her four brothers seals the future of the empire. The luminous tomb will outlive them all.

A mine of fabulous detail on the daily lives of the Mughal emperors, but fiction requires a more powerful engine than this stolid chronology packed with names, background and sidebars.

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March 1, 2010
Shadow Princess is the third book in a series, following Sundaresans The Twentieth Wife (2002) and The Feast of Roses (2003). The story resumes in seventeenth-century India after the death of the emperor Mehrunnisa, when his two daughters, Roshanara and Jahangir, are struggling for power because only one can become heir to the throne. Neither sister is allowed to marry or even leave their fathers harem, but this does not stop them from having forbidden romantic affairs. All of their struggles to compete with each other and gain power are overshadowed by Sundaresans take on the history and legend of the Taj Mahal, which almost serves as the novels main character. Sundaresan marshals extensive knowledge of Indian culture and history to tell the story of Roshanara and Jahangir as well as that of the Taj Mahal. A perfect read for those who wish to delve deeply into the cultural struggles of Indian women and the Taj Mahals celebrated architecture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)