Three Begums revolves around the lives of three ordinary women, who lived extraordinary, interwoven lives of fabulous joy, fierce pain, and untold trauma. Like many who came before them, they loved and dreamed. Although they were born across time and geography, they were united through their dedication to bettering the lives of all who found themselves in their orbit. Each fall victim to disease and premature death, without fulfilling their desires; and their desires, like all our desires, continue beyond their lives.
In this genre defying book, flowing seamlessly between the biographical and autobiographical, Ziauddin Sardar captures the complexities of everyday living, of human relationships, and raw emotion in a way that is very rarely achieved. We see the great story of human societies, where each chapter struggles to fulfil the aspirations of the last, weaving lives and ambitions together. Sardar shows how his own live was shaped by these women and how their collective lives moved – up and down like waves – to the rhythms of Urdu poetry.
We are taken on a journey that is inimitably personal yet reverberates universally. Powerful, tear jerking, unforgettable, Three Begums show that the only thing that matters in a good life is virtue, particularly the virtue of compassion, and working for something greater.