Three Begums: The Women Who Shaped My Life By Ziauddin Sardar C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd ISBN: 978-1805263333 276pp.

Ziauddin Sardar is arguably the UK’s leading Muslim public intellectual. He is an exceptionally versatile and engaging scholar, with a prolific and wide-ranging output. Over the course of his career, he has written and edited more than 50 books, spanning the fields of contemporary Islamic studies, British Muslim history, cultural theory and criticism, science and society, and futures studies.

Sardar is also a journalist and broadcaster and has worked extensively with The Guardian, BBC and Channel Four. He has written four major autobiographical works: Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (2005), Balti Britain: A Provocative Journey Through Asian Britain (2009), A Person of Pakistani Origin (2018) and, most recently, Three Begums: The Women Who Shaped My Life (2025).

Sardar’s latest memoir, Three Begums, is an attempt to make sense of what life has done to him after the deaths of three influential women in his life, one after the other. Their loss broke his heart, not only emotionally but also physically, and he had to undergo cardiac surgery.

Three Begums revolves around a central question that Sardar poses at the end of Chapter Two: “Why should a mere thing like death separate us?”. In reliving the memories of his begums, writing about them and sharing the book in various circles and literary festivals, he finds his answer: death cannot sever the bonds of love — it only imposes a spatial distance.

In his latest memoir, British author Ziauddin Sardar reflects on love, loss and language as he remembers three women who shaped his life

In his latest memoir, British author Ziauddin Sardar reflects on love, loss and language as he remembers three women who shaped his life

Love and memory, however, are resilient, as they bridge that distance and return to visit the living when grief becomes unbearable. During his grieving process, Urdu poetry and Munni Begum’s ghazals were his companions.

Three Begums is divided into three chapters, each dedicated to one begum. The first chapter focuses on Sardar’s mother, Hameeda, who comes across as a matriarch, a........

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