Taj : a story of Mugal india - 4th

‘Murari has fashioned a stylish novel that brings to life the politics and intrigues of Mughal court life.’— Outlook IndiaWhen his queen Arjumand Banu—Mumtaz-i-Mahal the Chosen One of the Palace—died Shah Jahan wanted to build a monument that was the image of his perfect love for her. For twenty-two years twenty thousand men laboured day and night to fulfil the emperor’s obsession. The result was the Taj Mahal a marble mausoleum lined with gold silver and precious jewels.This powerful novel narrates the story of the Taj on two parallel levels. The first one tells the passionate love story of Shah Jahan and Arjumand. The second recounts the later years of Shah Jahan’s reign the building of the Taj Mahal and the bloody pursuit of the fabulous peacock throne by his sons. In this complex and fascinating book Murari has written much more than a historical romance. He has skilfully recreated the period against which the story is set: the sensual opulence of the palace and the grinding poverty of seventeenth-century India the vicissitudes of Shah Jahan’s reign and the often bitter conflict between men of different faiths.Praise for Timeri N. Murari:‘Only a masterly historical novelist like Timeri Murari could skate so teasingly near the lip of a volcano. The structure of this novel is as fascinating as the building it describes’ — Bill Aitken Sunday Observer‘A book of powerful simplicity …’ — Gloucestershire Echo‘One can read into the symbolic undertones and find this a complex and disturbing novel’ — Asia MagazineTimeri N. Murari has written novels as well as screenplays and stage plays. His film The Square Circle made Time magazine’s top ten best films. He adapted it for the stage and directed it at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre.