Saturday, June 11, 2016

Book Review: The Princess in Black! An unheard story of the Mughals.

Authors: Upendra Dharamadhikari and Changali Anand

 

There’s a threat to the security of India, and the target this time is the beautiful monument Taj Mahal at Agra. The ex-president of the USA is visiting the Taj and the Defence Intelligence Agency are on a high alert. Alongside there’s an artefact stolen at the Delhi Museum. This artefact will unlock the mystery of world’s biggest diamond, three times bigger than the Kohinoor – a diamond which was passed from generation to generation by the Mughal Emperors, and has a secret to it. 

While the mystery of this Mughal diamond Noor-e-Jahan gets unveiled by Professor Narayan Shastri and Saima Azmi, the terrorist, Major Salim Khan, gets caught at Agra too. We are often made to think that Major Salim Khan and his sister Safi are the lineage to the Mughal dynasty.

Overall it’s a good plot and has a dramatic ending. With big organisations like Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Princeton University, etc being spoken off, we expect the mystery to be a lot more intriguing. However, this mystery becomes quite predictable.

What’s missing in this book is the maturity in writing. The spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and unnecessary elaboration of various scenes are a let-down. The research done on ASI, DIA and Mughal history is very basic – even school kids would know that much. It needed better proofing and editing.


Still, if you’re bored, if there’s nothing else to do, or if you’re a Mughal era fan, this book can be read! 

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