COVER STORY
12 | STORIZEN MAGAZINE JULY 2019when visiting the Taj!) In Mehrunisa, I
had a protagonist my readers had
connected with. I followed this with
The Hunt for Kohinoor which weaves
a spy story against the backdrop of
contemporary Indo-Pak history of
internecine warfare and our shared
Mughal history.The guide’s story, attributed to one P.
N. Oak, is routinely dismissed by
historians. But I was so disillusioned I
determined to write a story that would
rescue the Taj Mahal from lies and
show the monument for what it truly is:
a symbol of syncretic India. The
challenge was huge. Most Indians
know little about the monument except
for its famed beauty and fabled love
legend. There is a dearth of scholarly
work — indeed, the Austrian historian
Ebba Koch is the only one permitted
to take measurements of the complex
over her thirty-year research on the
monument. The Taj Conspiracy
became a runaway bestseller.
(Readers still email me that they take
my book along as a guideTell us about your latest book - The
Radiance of a Thousand Suns.The Radiance of a Thousand Suns is
about Niki’s determination to
complete her dead father's
unfinished book, his life's work, which
takes her from India to New York
City.There, her pursuit of a
mysterious immigrant woman turns
into an obsession that begins to i