Review Corner | The Twentieth Wife
I thought based on the premise, that it would be an interesting novel to read. Harems, court politics and political intrigue have always fascinated me — I have read several light novels (say like The Apothecary Diaries) set in China and Japan to that effect where women take charge of the narrative and spin their destinies to Asian-set fantasies involving strategies and gods (such as Strike The Zither and Daughter of the Moon Goddess).
If you don’t know what I am talking about, the following is the description of the book from Goodreads.
Goodreads Description
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 heroine’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.
My Review
But what do I even say…
Two of the worst people you know fall in love based on 3–4 meetings. A son who poison’s his dad, a daughter who eyes the throne first before the man seated in it, their unrivaled obsession with each other without any actual substance like they have a proper conversation for the first time after like 20 years of pining- leading to intentionally or not, many people’s death.
I think history conveniently forgets to teach us that these so called Great Emperors were often terrible people. Maybe I expected more from the Jahangir written in the book — but it was certainly not this — hero material. In here, I am criticizing the characters of the novel — maybe Mehrunnisa didn’t actually love Salim but actually coveted the throne? That may have created a much more impactful story line — because honest to god, their love was not at all convincing.
I have to grudgingly give credit where due as well — the author has indeed relied on historical accounts, decorated with her imagination — but for a novel — I felt I could not understand why Mehrunnisa and Salim loved each other — they barely knew each other and even if we categorize her interest in him to be love (and craving for power in a world where women didn’t have any) he barely looked at her 4 times — and purely out of lust. Literally till the last moment — he just wanted to possess her. It felt as if the author lined out all the historical events we knew — and then tried to fill in gaps — create justifications for actions resulting in a colorful patchwork where I could tell which aspects were derived from history and which were not — breaking the illusion of the novel.
While this could be true — in the sense of history — the characters ended up unlikable. Not much fault can be rested in the author in that sense.
But if I have to read about — ‘breasts heaving’, ‘trimmed waist’, ‘looked as young as the day of marriage’ — even in novels set in serious historical backdrops, I will no doubt harm a book or someone.
