Indu Sundaresan

Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Indu Sundaresan is an Indian-American author of historical fiction.<ref>"Do you know what we read last year?" The Hindu.</ref>

Personal life

She was born and raised in India as the daughter of an Indian Air Force pilot,<ref name="bio">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Group Captain R. Sundaresan,<ref name="bio"/> who died in a crash while on duty. Her mother's name is Madhuram Sundaresan.<ref name="bio"/> The family then moved to Bangalore, where she collected books eagerly. She then migrated to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Delaware. She has an MS in operations research and an MA in economics.<ref name="bio" /> She is married and lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and daughter.<ref name="About">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Career

Her first novel The Twentieth Wife is about how a young widow named Mehrunissa, daughter of Persian refugees and wife of an Afghan commander, becomes Empress of the Mughal Empire under the name of Nur Jahan.<ref>"Mesmerised by the Mughal era" The Hindu.</ref>

Her second novel The Feast of Roses is the sequel to The Twentieth Wife and focuses on Nur Jahan exerting authority granted by her husband Jahangir during the sixteen years of her marriage to the emperor.

Shadow Princess is the third novel in the Taj trilogy set after the succession of Shahjahan (Prince Khurram) whose chief queen Mumtaz Mahal dies in childbirth and then their daughter, Jahanara takes centre stage in the politics of the court.<ref>"Entranced by the past" The Hindu</ref>

She is also the author of The Splendor of Silence, historical fiction set in a fictional Indian princely state just before Indian independence in 1947. Her work has been translated into some 23 languages worldwide.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Her short fiction has appeared in The Vincent Brothers Review and on iVillage.com.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Awards

• Washington State Book Award for The Twentieth Wife in 2003.<ref name="About"/>
• Light of India award for Excellence in Literature<ref name="indusundaresan">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Works

Taj Mahal trilogy

• Twentieth Wife (2002)
• The Feast of Roses (2003)
• Shadow Princess (2010)

Other

• The Splendour of Silence (2006)
• In the Convent of Little Flowers (2008)
• The Mountain of Light (2013)

External links

• Template:Webarchive, essay by the author
• "An Interview with Novelist Indu Sundaresan" Template:Webarchive California Literary Review, 3 April 2007.