When Orhan Pamuk and Mohammed Hanif, among many others, figure on the blurb of a book singing paeans to it, expectations run high and the reader feels apprehensive that she is bound to be disappointed by the actual reading of it. But this grand epic narrative lives up to every praise showered upon it and then some. Divided into seven books which are further divided into 68 chapters, with intriguing titles like ‘Habib-un Nisa helps Wazir Khanam prepare for the night, and Navab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan teaches all possible lessons of pride and restraint to his body and his soul’, The Mirror of Beauty, is redolent of the age it depicts.
February 2014, volume 38, No 2