Unveiling Her Stories

This book on The Taj Trilogy of Indu Sundaresan theorises and critiques the embodied spaces of stigmatized womanhood through the delineation of the impasse of her female characters and their urge for equality, self-respect and selfhood. It presents the strategic revisiting of the Mughal history through the lens of women undertaken in the three novels of the Trilogy – The Twentieth Wife; The Feast of Roses and Shadow Princess. The unraveling of the unseen private world of zenanas focused on the lives of Queens enclosed in their cloistered seraglios with stifled voices as presented in the trilogy opens up nuanced views about historical narratives. The book closely analyses the approach and narrative slant of the trilogy indicating how the main stream history is male-stream, and gives a fresh and a revised view of interpreting history. It discloses the power behind the veil, the close but unrevealed influence and relationship between the court and the zenana, the un-showcased strength and hidden capabilities of women, the politics of their subordination, their inner urges, desires and inevitable subterfuges and subversions to fulfill them testifying the feminist stances embedded in the novels.