Set in the late 1500s, The Twentieth Wife centres on Mehrunnisa, who is abandoned by birth by her penniless parents. Saved and raised in Akbar’s court, she falls in love with his son Salim (who later becomes Emperor Jahangir). She is eight and she has decided that one day she will be his wife.

But there are powerful courtiers who have vowed never to let her ambition succeed; her biggest rival being none other than one of Jahangir's wives, who tries to turn the Emperor against her. Mehrunnisa, with her will and astute intelligence, works her way through the obstacles but it is only after many years when she is thirty-four and a widow that she reaches Jahangir’s harem, where love triumphs and she is crowned as his twentieth wife, Nur Jahan.

Jahangir never marries again and, for the next seventeen years, Mehrunnisa remains his queen, ruling and shaping his empire. In a time when women were rarely acknowledged, she inspired the idea of the Taj Mahal, owned ships, and had coins minted in her name.

“Indu Sundaresan has written a fascinating novel about a fascinating time, and has brought it alive with characters that are at once human and legendary, that move with grace and panache across the brilliant stage she has reconstructed for them,” said author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Wesley Burnett in his review of her book noticed the way she has used Mughal terms with such abandon. “This maintains the flavour of the times and the authenticity of the story.”

The Twentieth Wife won the Washington State Book Award in 2003.

Published in 2003.