by John Shors, 2004
Beautiful historical fiction about the Taj Mahal. An Emperor loses his beloved wife in childbirth and hires Isa, an architect, to build her a mausoleum that epitomizes her beauty. He uses her daughter, Jahanara, to be the model. They fall in love and have a daughter (Arjumand). It is a clandestine love affair because Jahanara was married to an odious man, Khondamer. The emperor loves his daughter, Jahanara, so much that he arranges for her to help Isa with the building of the Taj Mahal. He tells her of a secret passage from the bedroom of the Red Fort to a house in Agra and arranges for Isa to buy that house and for Jahanara to sleep in the bedroom. (17th Century Hindustan) The Emperor also has 2 sons – one is Dara – the oldest – who is a peace lover and wants to keep Hindus and Muslims friendly; to co-exist. The other – Aurangzeb – an evil black-hearted war monger – who ends up the Emperor – kills his brother, Dara, and pretty much destroys the Empire with his evil ways. Throughout it all, Jahanara has 2 friends that help her all her life – Ladli and Nizam. Isa, Jahanara, Arjumand, Ladli and Nizam end up living by the sea near Calcutta. Beautiful book – want to see Taj Mahal. “I had never seen such beauty, not even in Allah’s best gardens. For these flowers weren’t of water and light, but of semiprecious stones. They were infinitely more colorful than the rings of a rainbow, or the hues of a sunset.”