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10 Best Indian Authors to Read Once in a Lifetime

Discover the literary treasures of India with our curated list of the ‘Best Indian Authors’ to read in 2024. From timeless classics to contemporary masterpieces, explore the diverse voices that have shaped Indian literature. Uncover the brilliance of renowned writers, their impactful storytelling, and the rich cultural tapestry woven into each narrative. Whether you’re a seasoned reader or a newcomer to Indian literature, this blog post is your guide to the must-read works that showcase the depth and beauty of Indian storytelling.

Books by Best Indian Authors

1. train to pakistan.

Ten million people—Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs—were on the move when the new state of Pakistan was publicly established in the summer of 1947. Nearly a million of them had perished by the time the monsoon arrived, and everyone in northern India was either hiding, in fear, or in arms. A few small towns tucked away in the furthest corners of the boundary were the last remaining havens of tranquility. Mano Majra was a village among them.

At the outset of this timeless book, Khushwant Singh continues, “It is a place where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.” The community gets its first taste of the horrors of the civil war when the “ghost train,” a silent, magnificent burial train filled with the dead of thousands of refugees, comes one day at the end of the summer. The narrative of this remote community submerged in a sea of religious hatred is told in Train to Pakistan. It also tells the tale of a Muslim girl and a Sikh boy whose love endures and surpasses the devastation caused by conflict.

Amazon | Bookshop.org

2. Midnight’s Children

On August 15, 1947, at exactly midnight, Saleem Sinai was born—the exact day India gained its independence. Saleem is welcomed by fireworks, enthusiastic spectators, and Prime Minister Nehru personally. However, when he becomes older, he discovers the sinister ramifications of this coincidence. His every action is reflected and amplified in circumstances that affect the direction of national affairs; his existence is intrinsically linked to the history of his country; and his health and well-being are inexorably linked to that of his nation. The telepathic abilities that connect him to the 1,000 other “midnight’s children” in India—all of whom were born in that first hour and possess magical abilities—are arguably the most amazing.

This book is a masterful expression of the universal human comedy that is also an intriguing family saga and an astounding evocation of a large region and its people. Even after four decades of publication, Midnight’s Children continues to be regarded as a seminal piece of fiction and a masterful reading by one of the greatest authors of our day.

3. A Suitable Boy

A Suitable Boy paints a broad, panoramic picture of a complicated, multiethnic society in transition by telling the tale of common people entangled in a web of love, ambition, humor, grief, prejudice, reconciliation, the most careful social graces, and the most horrific brutality.

The central theme of Vikram Seth’s book is love: it tells the story of Lata and her mother Mrs. Rupa Mehra’s search for a suitable boy for Lata, whether through strict parental evaluation or affection. This engrossing story immerses us in the vividly imagined world of four sizable extended families during the early 1950s in a newly independent India that is going through a difficult period. It tells a captivating account of their lives and loves.

4. The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things offers such magic, mystery, and sadness that, literally, this reader turned the last page and decided to reread it. Immediately. It’s that haunting. —USA Today

Arundhati Roy’s contemporary masterpiece, which has been compared favorably to the writings of Faulkner and Dickens, is a potent blend of political drama, forbidden love story, and dramatic family history. The arrival of their stunning baby cousin, Sophie, completely upends the world of the seven-year-old twins, Rahel and Estha. This incident will reveal “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a nation teetering perilously near instability, as well as an illegal relationship and unintentional and intentional disasters.

The God of Small Things is a lush, lyrical, and unsettling Booker Prize winning classic that launched the author’s illustrious career of fiction and political criticism, which is still going strong today.

5. Partitions

Stunning debut book about uprooted kids and their escapes to safety, set in India during the bloody 1947 partition. As India is split into two countries, there is communal violence on both sides of the newly drawn boundary, and hordes of migrants are fleeing the chaos and bloodshed.

Twin Hindu boys Shankar and Keshav lose sight of their mother at an overrun rail station and join the throng of people searching for her. Simran Kaur, a young Sikh girl, has fled her father because he would sooner poison his daughter than see her violated.

And as he hobbles toward the newly formed Muslim nation of Pakistan, Ibrahim Masud, an aged Muslim physician, rediscovers his calling as a healer. He was driven from his hometown. This odd trio bands together as the displaced endure a range of tragedies, breaking every self-preservation guideline to create a hopeful future.

Partitions, a dramatic, brilliant tale of families and nations torn apart and rebuilt, presents a remarkable novelist with the power and elegance of a poet.

6. The Henna Artist

Captivated me from the first chapter to the final page. —Reese Witherspoon

The Henna Artist opens a gateway into a world that is simultaneously lush and interesting, stark and merciless. It does this through painting a vivid and captivating portrayal of one woman’s battle for fulfillment in a culture that is veering between the traditional and the modern.

Lakshmi, 17, leaves her violent marriage behind and travels alone to Jaipur, a brilliant pink city from the 1950s. There, she becomes the most sought-after henna artist and confidante among the upper-class, wealthy women. But she can never divulge her own as she is trusted with the wealthiest people’s secrets.

Lakshmi is well-known for her unique designs and wise counsel, but she has to exercise caution to stay away from envious rumors that could destroy her reputation and her business. One day, while she pursues her dream of living a self-sufficient existence, she is shocked to see her husband standing in front of her after all these years, bringing along a lively little girl who is her sister, a sister Lakshmi never knew she had.

All of a sudden, the prudence she has painstakingly cultivated as defense is called into question. She continues to persevere, using her gifts and encouraging everyone around her in the process.

7. Inglorious Empire

India’s economic contribution to the global economy was equal to that of Europe in the eighteenth century. After 200 years of British domination, by 1947, it had dropped six times. In addition to enslaving people and using deceit, the Empire also slaughtered defenseless protestors, blew up rebels with cannons, institutionalized bigotry, and starved millions of people.

Shashi Tharoor challenges British imperialism’s justification of itself as enlightened tyranny serving the interests of the governed by showing how every purported imperial “gift,” including the rule of law and the railways, was created only with Britain’s interests in mind.

He continues by demonstrating how India’s deindustrialization and the devastation of its textile sector served as the impetus for Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Tharoor uncovers the disgraceful truth of Britain’s tarnished Indian heritage with striking effect in this audacious and perceptive reevaluation of colonialism.

8. Annihilation of Caste

The political essay “Annihilation of Caste,” written by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a well-known political figure, eminent jurist, Buddhist activist, philosopher, anthropologist, historian, orator, writer, economist, scholar, and editor, was first published in May 1936 and spoke out against the caste system and Hindu orthodox religious leaders.

Throughout his life, Dr. Ambedkar battled for the rights of the Dalits and other socially oppressed groups, as well as the abolition of societal evils like untouchability. Jawaharlal Nehru chose Dr. Ambedkar as India’s first Law Minister in his Cabinet. 1990 saw the posthumous awarding of India’s highest civilian accolade, the “Bharat Ratna.”

One of the most important—yet little-known—pieces of Indian political literature is this one. It is a fearless critique of Hinduism and the caste structure. Ambedkar provides an academic analysis of Hindu texts, which support a rigidly hierarchical and immoral societal structure. Mahatma Gandhi, the most well-known Hindu in the world, openly addressed the provocation.

9. The Night Diary

A gripping, nuanced story of the human cost of conflict appropriate for both children and adults. -Kirkus, starred review

A moving, intimate, and hopeful story of India’s partition and one girl’s quest to find a new home in a split nation, in the style of Inside Out and Back Again and The War That Saved My Life.

1947 saw the division of India, which had just gained independence from British domination, into Pakistan and India. Thousands of people are killed crossing borders each year as a result of the division that has heightened tensions between Muslims and Hindus.

Half Hindu, half Muslim Nisha, twelve, no longer knows what her nation is or where she belongs. Nisha and her family flee to Pakistan after Papa determines it is too dangerous for them to remain there. Initially, they go by train, but eventually, they walk to their new home.

Nisha can’t imagine losing her homeland as well, especially after losing her mother when she was a kid. The journey is lengthy, challenging, and hazardous. Despite the fact that her nation has been destroyed, Nisha maintains hope that she will be able to rebuild herself.

The Night Diary, narrated through Nisha’s letters to her mother, is a poignant account of a young girl’s search for her own identity, her home, and a bright future.

10. The Namesake

Dazzling…An intimate, closely observed family portrait. —The New York Times

Meet the Ganguli family, recent Calcutta immigrants who are yearning to return home despite their best efforts to assimilate into American society.

The name they give their newborn child, Gogol, represents all the tensions that arise from upholding tradition in a foreign land—tensions that will follow Gogol throughout his own tortuous journey through betrayed allegiance, hilarious digressions, and heartbreaking love affairs.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri masterfully captures the experience of immigration and the complex relationships across generations in her book The Namesake.

More Historical Fiction Books

• The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
• The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
• The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand

Disclaimer: This blog post may contain affiliate links. If you click on these links and make a purchase, The Crimson Books may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

About the Author

TCB Team is a dedicated group of individuals who are passionate about literature and committed to critically analyzing and evaluating various literary works. The team consist of diverse members with varying backgrounds, interests, and expertise, which allows for a comprehensive and multifaceted assessment of books across different genres and themes.

Our primary goal is to provide insightful and unbiased reviews that help readers make informed decisions about their reading choices and contribute to the broader discourse surrounding literature.

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121 Best Indian Books Written in English: A List of Must-Read Novels by Indian Authors (2024)

Are you confused about which book to read next? Are you searching for the best Indian books and novels by Indian authors to read? Do you have a particular genre in mind?

Don’t Worry!

Indian English Literature has come a long way – from just a few English books releasing a year previously to thousands of new titles launching every year now.

In 2020, India’s book market is valued at an with an estimated Rs 739 billion . India ranks second, after the US, in English language publishing with over 9000 publishers.

From a humble start in the 20th century, after Independence, India published 21,600 new English titles in 2010.

With so many books releasing and Indian literature developing by leaps and bounds, it can be a daunting task to find the best Indian novels amongst the lot.

To make this easier, we have compiled this list of “Best Indian Books” of all the different categories and genres.

Also Read : 75 Best Indian Authors in English: The Most Definitive List

NOTE : We have not included books by many award-winning authors of Indian-origin like Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses, Midnight’s Children), Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake), V.S. Naipaul (A Bend in the River), Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance) etc.

Table of Contents

(Click on an genre to navigate to the particular section)

• Literary Fiction
• Religion and Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Mythological Fiction
• Thriller and Mystery
• Sci-Fi and Fantasy
• Biography and Memoir

Best Indian Classics

The guide by r.k. narayan.

The Guide  is a 1958 novel written in English by the Indian author R. K. Narayan. Like most of his works, the novel is based on Malgudi, the fictional town in South India.

The novel describes the transformation of the protagonist, Raju, from a tour guide to a spiritual guide and then one of the greatest holy men of India.

The novel brought its author the 1960 Sahitya Akademi Award for English.

MALGUDI DAYS BY R.K. NARAYAN

Malgudi Days  is a collection of short stories by  R.K. Narayan  published in 1943.

The book includes 32 stories, all set in the fictional town of Malgudi, located in South India. Each of the stories portrays a facet of life in Malgudi.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF AN INDIAN PRINCE BY MULK RAJ ANAND

The Private Life of an Indian Prince   is a novel by Mulk Raj Anand first published in 1953. This book deals with the abolition of the princely states system in India.

UNTOUCHABLE BY MULK RAJ ANAND

Untouchable  was inspired by Anand’s aunt’s experience when she had a meal with a Muslim woman and was treated as an outcast by his family.

The plot of this book revolves around the argument for eradicating the caste system.

TRAIN TO PAKISTAN BY KHUSHWANT SINGH

Train to Pakistan  recounts the Partition of India in August 1947.

Instead of depicting the Partition in terms of only the political events surrounding it, Singh digs into a deep local focus, providing a human dimension which brings to the event a sense of reality, horror, and believability.

GODAN BY MUNSHI PREMCHAND, TRANSLATED BY JAI RATAN

Godan  is a Hindi novel by Munshi Premchand, translated into English as  The Gift of a Cow .

It is themed around the socio-economic deprivation as well as the exploitation of the village poor. It was translated into English in 1957 by Jai Ratan.

THE ROOM ON THE ROOF BY RUSKIN BOND

The Room on the Roof  is the story of an orphaned Anglo-Indian boy, Rusty, living in a European colony in Dehradun with his guardian Mr. Harrison, who wants him to stay away from Indians and groom him as a pure Englishman.

Related: A list of Ruskin Bond’s Best Books

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF FELUDA BY SATYAJIT RAY

Between 1965 and 1992, Satyajit Ray wrote a total of 35 Feluda stories, featuring the master sleuth Pradosh C. Mitter, AKA Feluda.

These stories are now available in 2 volumes of  The Complete Adventures of Feluda . They were translated into English by Gopa Majumdar.

COMBAT OF SHADOWS BY MANOHAR MALGONKAR

Manohar Malgonkar’s  Combat of Shadows  is the tale of an Anglo-Indian woman, Ruby Miranda, who dreams of becoming a pucca memsahib to an Englishman but has to face the reality of racial discrimination prevalent in pre-independence India.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN BY NIRAD C. CHAUDHURI

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian  is an astonishing work of self-discovery. In this book, he mingles the growth and changes of India’s politics, societies, and national feelings with those of his own personality. It is a serious and introspective narrative and historical testimony.

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Best Indian Literary Fiction Novels

The god of small things by arundhati roy.

The God of Small Things  by Arundhati Roy is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel, whose lives are destroyed by the “Love Laws” that are laid down by society.

The book explores how small things affect people’s behaviour and their lives. It won the Booker Prize in 1997.

THE WHITE TIGER BY ARAVIND ADIGA

The White Tiger  provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world. The novel has been well-received, making the New York Times bestseller list in addition to winning the Man Booker Prize.

It is a first-person narrative of Balram Halwai, an impoverished young man from a small village who moves to Delhi to work as a chauffeur for the rich.

THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS BY KIRAN DESAI

The Inheritance of Loss  by Kiran Desai follows the journey of Biju, an illegal immigrant in the US who is trying to make a new life; and Sai, an Anglicised Indian girl living with her grandfather in India.

The major theme is colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism.

A SUITABLE BOY BY VIKRAM SETH

A Suitable Boy  by Vikram Seth is set in a newly post-independence, post-partition India.

The novel follows the story of four families over a period of 18 months, and centres on Mrs Rupa Mehra’s efforts to arrange the marriage of her younger daughter, Lata, to a “suitable boy”.

It is one of the longest novels published in a single volume in the English language.

SEA OF POPPIES BY AMITAV GHOSH

At the heart of the story of  Sea of Poppies  is a vast ship, the Ibis.

Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China and onboard are a diverse cast of characters.

Another famous novel by Amitav Ghosh is “The Hungry Tide”.

NARCOPOLIS BY JEET THAYIL

Narcopolis  by Jeet Thayil is about the lives of a few people, bound together by a common passion – Opium, and about Bombay, in a way we have never heard of before.

Bombay is stripped of its glamour, riches, beaches, and skylines and we are taken to Shuklaji Street, to Rashid’s opium den, and are impelled to see the other side of Bombay.

THE GREAT INDIAN NOVEL BY SHASHI THAROOR

The Great Indian Novel  is a satirical novel by Shashi Tharoor which takes the story of the Mahabharata and recasts and resets it in the context of the Indian Independence Movement and the first three decades post-independence.

FASTING, FEASTING BY ANITA DESAI

Fasting, Feasting  by Anita Desai is the story of a family living in a small town in India, where provincial customs and attitudes dictate the future of all children: girls are to be married off and boys are to become as educated as possible.

THE HOUSE OF BLUE MANGOES BY DAVID DAVIDAR

A gripping family chronicle, David Davidar’s  The House of Blue Mangoes  spans nearly half a century and three generations of the Dorai family as they search for their place in a rapidly changing society.

The novel brings vividly to life a small corner of India while offering a stark indictment of colonialism.

VANITY BAGH BY ANEES SALIM

Vanity Bagh  is about the life of a boy from the minority community. The book is not about hope. It is about hopelessness.

More than anything else, it is about distress and religious intolerance that can divide humanity and win elections.

Best Books on Indian History

Related: 53 Best Books on Indian History (The Complete Guide)

EARLY INDIA FROM THE ORIGINS TO AD 1300 BY ROMILA THAPAR

Romila Thapar’s Early India  explores India’s past quite vividly, helping readers to visualize the formation of a nation and how it grew and flourished over generations.

It explores all varieties of hue that India represented from then to now and documents India like it has never been documented before.

HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL INDIA BY SATISH CHANDRA

History of Medieval India provides a comprehensive overview of the history of medieval India.

It covers the thousand-year period between the eighth and the eighteenth century.

It deals with the histories of many known and lesser-known kingdoms. Kingdoms included are the Cholas, Rajputs, Turks, Vijayanagara, Bahmanis, Mughals, Marathas etc.

FROM PLASSEY TO PARTITION: A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA BY SEKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY

From Plassey to Partition  is an eminently readable account of the emergence of India as a nation.

It covers about two hundred years of political and socio-economic turbulence – 1757 to 1947 – and maps a wide and often complicated terrain of historical happenings.

It presents the entire history of the rise of various Indian freedom fighters. It also talks of the Partition that led to the creation of India and Pakistan.

INDIA’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE BY BIPAN CHANDRA

Bipin Chandra’s book,  India’s Struggle for Independence , is a well-documented history of India’s freedom struggle against the British rule.

It is one of the most accurate books which has been painstakingly written after thorough research based on legal and valid verbal and written sources.

The book also explains in detail Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation and the civil disobedience movements.

INDIA’S WAR: WORLD WAR II AND THE MAKING OF MODERN SOUTH ASIA BY SRINATH RAGHAVAN

In  India’s War , historian Srinath Raghavan paints a compelling picture of battles abroad and of life on the home front, arguing that the war is crucial to explaining how and why colonial rule ended in South Asia.

LAND OF THE SEVEN RIVERS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA’S GEOGRAPHY BY SANJEEV SANYAL

In  Land of the Seven Rivers , Sanjeev Sanyal sets off to explore India and look at how the country’s history was shaped by, among other things, its rivers, mountains and cities.

HIMALAYAN BLUNDER: THE ANGRY TRUTH ABOUT INDIA’S MOST CRUSHING MILITARY DISASTER BY BRIGADIER JOHN DALVI

Himalayan Blunder  dealt with the causes, consequences and aftermath of the Sino-Indian War of 1962, which ended in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army inflicting a defeat on India.

Brigadier Dalvi served in the Indian Army and gives a first-person account of the war.

The book was banned by the Indian Government after its publication.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NETAJI? BY ANUJ DHAR

What Happened to Netaji  talks about the controversy surrounding the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and lights the factual position with regard to the air crash theory.

It provides three prominent theories of Bose’s death zeroing in on what has come to be known as the Faizabad angle of the Bose mystery.

AN ERA OF DARKNESS: THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA BY SHASHI THAROOR

In this explosive book,  An Era of Darkness , bestselling author Shashi Tharoor reveals with acuity, impeccable research, and trademark wit, just how disastrous British rule was for India.

Besides examining the many ways in which the colonizers exploited India, he demolishes the arguments of Western and Indian apologists for the Empire on the supposed benefits of British rule.

Best Indian Books on Religion and Mythology

The complete works of swami vivekananda.

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda  is an 8-volume set and contains all the books, lecture, discussions, prose, poetry, and letters written by Swami Vivekananda, a spiritual teacher who introduced Hindu philosophies such as Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world.

MAHABHARATA BY C. RAJAGOPALACHARI (Translator)

Originally published in the year 1951, this book is an abridged English retelling of Vyasa’s  Mahabharata .

The Mahabharata is not a mere epic; it is a romance, telling the tale of heroic men and women, and of some who were divine; it is a whole literature in itself, containing a code of life, a philosophy of social and ethical relations, and speculative thought on human problems.

YAJNASENI: THE STORY OF DRAUPADI BY PRATIBHA RAY

Yajnaseni  makes a determined effort for a balanced portrayal of the epic character of Draupadi and brings to the surface the broader and deeper aspects of her mind that lay submerged in the majestic sweep of the grand Mahabharata.

It was translated into English by Pradip Bhattacharya.

RAMAYANA (Series) BY ASHOK K. BANKER

Ashok K. Banker’s  Ramayana Series  is a retelling of Valmiki Ramayanam .

It is a set of 8 books – Prince of Ayodhya, Siege of Mithila, Demons of Chitrakut, Armies of Hanuman, Bridge of Rama, King of Ayodhya, Vengeance of Ravana and Sons of Sita.

MYTH = MITHYA: A HANDBOOK OF HINDU MYTHOLOGY BY DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

In  Myth = Mithya , Devdutt retells sacred Hindu stories and decodes Hindu symbols and rituals, using a unique style of commentary, illustrations and diagrams.

The aim is not to outgrow myth, but to be enriched and empowered by its ancient, potent and still relevant language.

my HANUMAN CHALISA BY DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

In  my Hanuman Chalisa , acclaimed mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik demystifies Hinduism’s most popular prayer for the contemporary reader.

His unique approach makes the ancient hymn accessible, combined as it is with his trademark illustrations.

Best Indian Historical Fiction Novels

The devil’s wind by manohar malgonkar.

The Devil’s Wind  by Manohar Malgonkar tells the story of Nana Saheb, who played a leading role in the 1857 War of Independence.

It provides a sympathetic portrait of a man whom the British portrayed as a great villain.

The book is written as an autobiography in which Nana Saheb describes his life in his own words.

CHANAKYA’S CHANT BY ASHWIN SANGHI

In  Chanakya’s Chant , Ashwin Sanghi takes the greatest strategist of Indian History, Chanakya and makes us question –

“What if Chanakya were alive today?”; “What if he were a player in today’s politics?”; “Would his brilliance and principles be relevant even in today’s murky politics?”

TAJ MAHAL TRILOGY BY INDU SUNDARESAN

The Taj Mahal Trilogy  is a woman-centric tale of power, passion and love.

The first part,  The Twentieth Wife , narrates the story of Mehrunnisa, the powerful wife of Jahangir.

The second part,  The Feast of Roses , narrates the story of Mumtaz Mahal.

The third part,  Shadow Princess , is the story of Jahanara, the daughter of Shah Jahan and the sister of Aurangzeb.

HARAPPA: CURSE OF THE BLOOD RIVER BY VINEET BAJPAI

Harappa: Curse of the Blood River  knits 3,700 years of powerful ancient and modern-day characters and a nail-biting conspiracy – all in one literary thriller.

It is the first among a series of four books. A saga of violence and deceit, gods and demons, love and ambition.

EMPIRE BY DEVI YESODHARAN

Devi Yesodharan’s  Empire  is the tale of an archer and warrior in the empire of Rajendra Chola, who ruled a vast empire from 1014-44.

This warrior is not from South India but rather a Greek woman, who has been surrendered in defeat by a raiding party bested by the Cholas.

ZELALDINUS: A MASQUE BY IRWIN ALLAN SEALY

Zelaldinus  is a fictional story which involves the great Mughal Emperor Akbar, and a current-generation tourist Irv. Together they rediscover the gloomy city of Fatehpur Sikri; a city which was abandoned soon after its completion.

Best Mythological Fiction Books by Indian Authors

Shiva trilogy by amish tripathi.

The Shiva Trilogy  by Amish Tripathi is on a radical idea that all Gods were once human beings; it was their deeds in the human life that made them famous as Gods.

The three books of the trilogy are – The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras.

ASURA: TALE OF THE VANQUISHED BY ANAND NEELAKANTAN

Anand Neelakantan’s  Asura: Tale of the Vanquished  depicts the tale of Ramayana from the viewpoint of Ravana and a common Asura, Bhadra.

The book attempts to highlight the voice of the vanquished as opposed to the victor’s version of Ramayana that is commonly known.

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS BY CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

The Palace of Illusions  is a rendition of the Hindu epic Mahabharata as told from Draupadi’s viewpoint, namely, that of a woman living in a patriarchal world.

The novel traces Princess Panchaali’s life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom.

THE ARYAVARTA CHRONICLES BY KRISHNA UDAYASANKAR

The Aryavarta Chronicles   (Trilogy)  isn’t the usual tale of Mahabharata.

Rather, it is a completely new myriad of characters woven into the familiar story of the Kauravas and the Pandavas seen through the eyes of Govinda Shauri.

THUNDERGOD: THE ASCENDANCE OF INDRA BY RAJIV G. MENON

Thundergod  by Rajiv G Menon is the story of Indra, born of a prophetic union between the Earth Goddess Gaia and Daeyus, chief of the Devas.

It is a compelling saga, blended by history, spiced by legend and mutated by myth.

KARNA’S WIFE: THE OUTCAST’S QUEEN BY KAVITA KANE

Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen  tells the extraordinary story of Karna, the unsung hero of the Mahabharata, through the eyes of his wife Uruvi, bringing his story to the reader from a unique perspective.

SARASWATI’S INTELLIGENCE BY VAMSEE JULURI

The Kishkindha Chronicles  re-imagines the ancient prehistory of India from a startlingly new perspective that will make us rethink what it means to be human and animal. 

Saraswati’s Intelligence  is the first book in the trilogy.

Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta by Amish

Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta is worth every minute that you spend reading it.

With the classic combination of action and adventure doused in a generous dose of mythology and fantasy, the book appeals to almost every kind of reader.

That Amish decides to pour in a generous amount of information and detailing is like the icing on top.

Keepers of the Kalachakra by Ashwin Sanghi

Keepers of the Kalachakra  is a historical cum mythological cum science-fiction thriller which revolves around an ancient concept in Vajrayana Buddhism – the  Kalachakra .

The writing makes use of many mystical concepts, scientific theorems & research, historical incidents and, conspiracy theories which Ashwin blends in beautifully with the story.

Best Romance Novels by Indian Writers

Related: Best Indian Romance Novels | A List of 20 Romantic Books

THE ONE YOU CANNOT HAVE BY PREETI SHENOY

Preeti Shenoy’s  The One You Cannot Have  handles the delicate subject of love failure and depression and puts a different spin on things.

It gives us a message that if the situations are handled in a more mature way all these lives can be saved.

I TOO HAD A LOVE STORY BY RAVINDER SINGH

Not all love stories are meant to have a perfect ending.  I Too Had a Love Story  by Ravinder Singh is one such saga.

It is a tender and heartfelt tale of Ravin and Khushi — two people who find each other on a matrimonial site and fall in love until life puts their love to the ultimate test.

THIS IS NOT YOUR STORY BY SAVI SHARMA

This is Not Your Story  follows the story of 4 youngsters – Shaurya, Miraya, Anubhav and Kasturi, and how they tackle their problems and conquer life.

The book explores what it takes to dream fearlessly and giving love a second chance.

Another good book by Savi Sharma is Everyone Has A Story .

THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS BY DURJOY DATTA

The Girl of My Dreams  by Durjoy Datta is the story of Daman who suffers a memory lapse after he wakes up from a coma following a car accident.

All he remembers now is a name — Shreyasi, a girl who was in the same car and whose hazy face now haunts his dreams.

IT’S ALL IN THE PLANETS BY PREETI SHENOY

It’s All in the Planets  is the story of how four people’s lives and their two love stories coincide to bring a permanent change in all their lives.

It is a very fresh and unique love story which transcends age and geographical boundaries and makes you go all gooey in the heart.

SORRY YOU’RE NOT MY TYPE BY SUDEEP NAGARKAR

Sorry, You’re Not My Type  is the story of one of the reputed Delhi-based college music band, VAYU – Vikrant, Anamika and Yuvi, and they will make you believe ‘When your passion and purpose is greater than your fears, you find a way to overcome them’.

THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS BY ANUJA CHAUHAN

Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan , set in 1988, revolves around the Thakur family of Hailey Road, which includes Justice Laxminarayan, his wife and their five daughters who are named alphabetically – Anjini, Binodini, Chandrakanta, Debjani and Eshwari.

2 STATES: THE STORY OF MY MARRIAGE BY CHETAN BHAGAT

2 States: The Story of My Marriage  by Chetan Bhagat is about a couple coming from two different states in India, who face hardships in convincing their parents to approve of their marriage. The book is partly autobiographical.

A HALF-BAKED LOVE STORY BY ANURAG GARG

A Half-Baked Love Story  unfolds a candid narration by a love-struck, dumbstruck and spellbound guy, Aarav, who confesses every last detail of his love story to his drunkard friends on a New Year’s night. The tale of his first love Anamika.

JUST MARRIED, PLEASE EXCUSE BY YASHODHARA LAL

Just Married, Please Excuse  by Yashodhara Lal is the story of a young couple, a quick-tempered big-city girl and a laidback desi boy, who must learn to adjust to married life and to each other with a little help from their idiosyncratic staff, Zarreena and Vinod, their nutty friend Vivi and, of course, their respective families.

Best Indian Thriller and Mystery Novels

Spy in the amber by manohar malgonkar.

Spy in Amber , first published in 1971, is set during the time when tensions between India and China were at their peak.

Hidden away from the world, in the deep belly of the Himalayas lies the Ragyabas monastery which has a treasure worth millions in its possession.

Fearing a Chinese invasion, the head monk decides to hand over the treasure to India for safekeeping. But, the Chinese have different plans.

SACRED GAMES BY VIKRAM CHANDRA

Sacred Games  draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh, and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.

It is a story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side.

BYOMKESH BAKSHI (SERIES) BY SHARADINDU BANDYOPADHYAY

In the early thirties, a detective by the name of  Byomkesh Bakshi  made an unobtrusive entry into the world of Bengali fiction.

Within days he was a household name, courtesy of his cerebral skills and the exciting situations he found himself in. The English version is translated by Monimala Dhar.

IF GOD WAS A BANKER BY RAVI SUBRAMANIAN

If God Was A Banker  by Ravi Subramanian revolves around two management graduates who are in the rat race for success.

Sundeep is ambitious and selfish, which leads him to achieve his goals through unscrupulous means. Swami is the exact opposite as he sticks to his morals and ethics to ensure success in his career.

MURDER IN A MINUTE BY SHOUVIK BHATTACHARYA

In  Murder in a Minute , when a young woman is found lifeless in a pool of her own blood, everyone is convinced that it is her college sweetheart who murdered her.

The victim’s step-brothers, Rishabh and Arya aren’t so convinced. They embark on a journey to unearth the truth, a journey riddled with fallacies and conspiracies, planted intentionally to trap them.

MARRY ME, STRANGER BY NOVONEEL CHAKRABORTY

Marry Me, Stranger  is the story of Rivanah Bannerjee, a young and independent girl living alone in Mumbai.

Her life is in danger. Someone has been following her around, watching her every move, trying to get control over her life.

PATANG BY BHASKAR CHATTOPADHYAY

In  Patang , a man is found brutally murdered, his body posed like a kite on the tallest cell tower in the city.

As one corpse after another turns up in the unlikeliest of places, maverick investigator Chandrakant Rathod has to pit his sharp instincts against the machinations of the sadistic, ruthless killer.

THE MURDER OF SONIA RAIKKONEN BY SALIL DESAI

In The Murder of Sonia Raikkonen , late one November night, the mutilated corpse of a young Finnish tourist is found in a public garden in Pune.

It looks like a case of brutal rape and murder, but Senior Inspector Saralkar and PSI Motkar find themselves probing further….delving deeper.

DEAD IN A MUMBAI MINUTE BY MADHUMITA BHATTACHARYA

In  Dead in a Mumbai Minute , detective Reema Ray is given the case of the year – the murder of Ashutosh Dhingre, former assistant to fading Bollywood superstar Kimaaya Kapoor.

The location of the crime is Kimaaya’s private island. The suspects – her house guests, and Kimaaya herself!

A CUT LIKE WOUND BY ANITA NAIR

A Cut Like Wound  begins on the first night of Ramadan when a young male prostitute is killed and burnt alive.

As bodies begin to pile up one after the other, and it becomes clear that a serial killer is on the prowl, Inspector Borei Gowda recognizes a pattern in the killings which no one else does.

Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books by Indian Writers

Professor shonku by satyajit ray.

Professor Shonku  is a fictional scientist created by Satyajit Ray in a series of Bengali science-fiction books published from 1965.

His full name is Trilokeshwar Shonku, and by occupation, he is an inventor. Professor Shonku was translated into English by Sukanya Jhaveri in 1981.

GAMEWORLD TRILOGY BY SAMIT BASU

Three books, The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore’s Secret and The Unwaba Revelations, form the three parts of  The GameWorld Trilogy .

The trilogy narrates the reawakening of the terrible rakshas, Danh-Gem, and the arrival of a hero to face him.

THE RISE OF SIVAGAMI BY ANAND NEELAKANTAN

Anand Neelakantan’s  The Rise of Sivagami  is a prequel to the epic Indian movie Bahubali: The Beginning.

The story revolves around Sivagami, a character of Baahubali. It also tells the readers more about Kattappa, another important character of the story.

THE DEVOURERS BY INDRA DAS

The Devourers  is set during the reign of the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century and extends to modern India.

It features Shape-shifters, more specifically werewolves, and explores the concepts of love, cannibalism, and what it means to be human.

It is told in a multi-layered manner, alternating between different time periods and perspectives.

DARK THINGS BY SUKANYA VENKATRAGHAVAN

Combining fantasy with the rich tapestry of folklore,  Dark Things  is a strange fairytale wrought of intrigue and enchantment, of shadows and secrets, of evil and those who battle it.

CULT OF CHAOS BY SHWETA TANEJA

Cult of Chaos  is the story of Tantriks, who are now overground. They have their own council, police and justice systems.

It narrates the story of Anantya Tantrik who struggles to stop the madness of White and Red Tantriks who are facing off, and of a Black tantric who is brewing some dangerous shakti.

SAVAGE BLUE BY VIKRAM BALAGOPAL

Savage Blue  by Vikram Balagopal is the story of two people – Akila Raina, who disappeared when she was only ten, and Shyam, who was with her that fateful night.

Now twenty years later, Akila has mysteriously reappeared, grown-up and gorgeous. She tells him of surreal worlds, her travels between them and her encounters with strange creatures.

NINE TRILOGY BY SHOBHA NIHALANI

For thousands of years, the wisdom of the  NINE  has protected mankind from destroying itself.

But a vengeful ancient spirit has returned to shatter the peace. With the help of magical powers, he has possessed a young man and mobilised black yogis to destroy the  NINE .

SKYFIRE BY AROON RAMAN

Skyfire  is set in May 2012 when India is hit by a series of freak weather disturbances and startling epidemics that threaten to bring the country to its knees.

At the same time, children are vanishing from the slums of the capital and nobody seems to care.

Now it is upon journalist Chandrasekhar, historian Meenakshi Pirzada and intelligence operative Syed Ali Hassan to follow the leads and solve the mystery.

ALICE IN DEADLAND (TRILOGY) BY MAINAK DHAR

Civilization as we know it ended more than fifteen years ago, leaving as it’s legacy barren wastelands called the Deadland and a new terror for the humans who survived- hordes of undead Biters. 

Alice in Deadland  is the story of Fifteen-year-old Alice who has spent her entire life in the Deadland learning how best to use guns and knives in the ongoing war for survival against the Biters.

Best Indian Humour Books

Serious men by manu joseph.

Serious Men  tells the story of Ayyan Mani, a middle-aged Dalit, who works as an assistant to a brilliant Brahmin astronomer at a scientific institute in Mumbai.

Furious at his humble situation in life, Ayyan develops an outrageous story that his 10-year-old son is a mathematical genius – a lie which becomes increasingly elaborate and out of control.

DORK TRILOGY BY SIDIN VADUKUT

The three books of  Dork Trilogy  are – Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese , God Save the Dork and Who Let The Dork Out?

It narrates the adventures and misadventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese; a stupendously naïve but academically gifted young man (he was ranked 41st in his class).

This trilogy is for all of those who’ve ever sat depressed in cubicles…and wanted to kill themselves with office stationery.

MRS FUNNYBONES BY TWINKLE KHANNA

Full of wit and delicious observations,  Mrs Funnybones  captures the life of the modern Indian woman — a woman who organizes dinner each evening, even as she goes to work all day, who runs her own life but has to listen to her Mummyji, who worries about her weight and the state of the country.

GONE WITH THE VINDALOO BY VIKRAM NAIR

Gone with the Vindaloo  is 2 stories running parallel – One is in the Mahadev household, where the cook Pakwaan is trying to learn cooking from his father and yearns to one day make the Vindaloo that his grandfather was most known for.

The parallel story is indeed about Pakwaan’s grandfather, Kalaam.

THE COMPETENT AUTHORITY BY SHOVON CHOWDHURY

The Competent Authority  is a satire on almost all the power circles of our country – the government, the bureaucracy, the police, the army, social workers, spiritual gurus and others.

In the 2030s, India has been nuked by the Chinese and is in a pitiable state. Pakistan ceases to exist after being bombed by the Americans.

With this backdrop, Shovon contrives a humorous story defacing the power mongers.

Best Chick-lit Novels by Indian Writers

Trust me by rajashree.

Set against the backdrop of the Hindi film industry,  Trust Me  is a comic story about love, heartbreak and friendship.

The protagonist, Parvati, decides to go off men when she is dumped by her boyfriend.

PIECE OF CAKE BY SWATI KAUSHAL

Piece of Cake  is the story of Minal who wants it all – a successful career, a lifestyle to match, and a totally cool guy who’ll buy her diamonds, bring her flowers, and laugh at her jokes.

But given the unending record of her life’s embarrassments, it’s not going to be that simple.

THE ZOYA FACTOR BY ANUJA CHAUHAN

The Zoya Factor , written in the first person, is the story of a cricket-hating ad-executive, Zoya, who is forced to become a part of the Indian cricket team, not as a player nor a cheerleader nor a physiotherapist nor a psychiatrist but as a lucky charm.

ALMOST SINGLE BY ADVAITA KALA

Almost Single , a heartfelt and wickedly funny cross-cultural debut novel, introduces a smart, irreverent young woman, Aisha Bhatia, searching for independence and matrimony in a culture-bound by tradition.

CONFESSIONS OF A LISTMANIAC BY MEENAKSHI REDDY MADHAVAN

Confessions of a Listmaniac  is the story of seventeen-year-old Layla who knows that journal writing is way retro but thinks, why not recreate the whole blog thing in a notebook?

Layla’s journal entries often morph into quirky lists that record her observations on her life and times.

I QUIT! NOW WHAT? BY ZARREEN KHAN

I Quit! Now What?  is the story of a marketing professional Nimisha, who after having worked 7 years with her current company, is still not treated the way she deserves to be treated and that makes her upset.

ENCOUNTERS OF A FAT BRIDE BY SAMAH VISARIA

Encounters of a Fat Bride  is the story of Madhurima Pandey, a twenty-five-year-old single girl who is gradually coming to terms with the annoying ‘you’re next’ nudges from family and friends.

But soon they realize that chances of finding a groom for her are slim – mainly because she’s not.

At 93 kilos, she knows she isn’t the ideal weight for marriage, even if her family believes she’s the ideal age.

Best Biographies and Memoirs by Indians

The story of my experiments with truth by mahatma gandhi.

The Story Of My Experiments with Truth  is the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi, covering his life from early childhood through to 1921.

It was written in weekly instalments and published in his journal Navjivan from 1925 to 1929. The English translation was done by Mahadev Desai.

PLAYING IT MY WAY BY SACHIN TENDULKAR

Playing It My Way  is the autobiography of the God of Indian cricket, Sachin Tendulkar.

The book summarises Tendulkar’s early days, his 24 years of international career and aspects of his life that have not been shared publicly.

MY DAYS: A MEMOIR BY RK NARAYAN

In My Days: A Memoir , R.K. Narayan in his usual winning, humorous style, shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother’s garden in Madras with his ferocious pet peacock.

LONE FOX DANCING: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY RUSKIN BOND

In this brilliantly readable autobiography,  Lone Fox Dancing , one of India’s greatest writers shows us the roots of everything he has written.

He begins with a dream and a gentle haunting, before taking us to an idyllic childhood in Jamnagar by the Arabian Sea, where he composed his first poem, and New Delhi in the early 1940s, where he found material for his first short story.

WINGS OF FIRE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY A. P. J. ABDUL KALAM

In  Wings of Fire: An Autobiography , A. P. J. Abdul Kalam examines his early life, effort, hardship, fortitude, luck and chance that eventually led him to lead Indian space research, nuclear and missile programs.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI BY PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA

Autobiography of a Yogi  presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time.

With engaging candour, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda narrates the inspiring chronicle of his life.

Recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West.

THE ACCIDENTAL PRIME MINISTER BY SANJAYA BARU

The Accidental Prime Minister  is a 2014 memoir by Sanjaya Baru, who was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media advisor from May 2004 to August 2008.

The book alleges that Manmohan was not entirely in control of his cabinet, or even the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Instead, significant power was wielded by the Congress party’s president Sonia Gandhi.

OUR MOON HAS BLOOD CLOTS: THE EXODUS OF THE KASHMIRI PANDITS BY RAHUL PANDITA

The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists.

But there is another part of the story that has remained unrecorded and buried. 

Our Moon Has Blood Clots  is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants.

RAJINIKANTH: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY BY NAMAN RAMACHANDRAN

Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography  recounts Rajini’s career in meticulous detail, tracing his incredible cinematic journey from his very first film, Apoorva Raagangal, in 1975 to memorable forays into Bollywood to the mega-hits.

Along the way, the book provides rare insights into Rajini’s personal life.

VEERAPPAN: CHASING THE BRIGAND BY K. VIJAY KUMAR

No other bandit in recent times has captured the public’s imagination as much as Koose Muniswamy Veerappan.

Be it his trademark moustache, stories of his daring escapades or his ruthless massacre of officers, Veerappan continues to fascinate, even thirteen years after his death. 

Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand  is a lucid and incisive account of the rise and fall of India’s most dreaded forest brigand.

Best Indian Self-Help Books

The monk who sold his ferrari by robin sharma.

A wonderfully crafted fable,  The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari  tells the extraordinary story of Julian Mantle, a lawyer forced to confront the spiritual crisis of his out-of-balance life.

On a life-changing odyssey to an ancient culture, he discovers powerful, wise, and practical lessons that give us the wisdom to create a life of passion, purpose, and peace.

WHO WILL CRY WHEN YOU DIE? BY ROBIN SHARMA

In  Who Will Cry When You Die? , Robin Sharma offers 101 simple solutions to life’s most complex problems, ranging from a little-known method for beating stress and worry, to a powerful way to enjoy the journey while you create a legacy that lasts.

YOU CAN WIN BY SHIV KHERA

In  You Can Win , Shiv Khera reveals that all success is deliberate and there is nothing magical about winning.

Using common sense and varying lessons taken from ancient wisdom to modern philosophy, he shows how we can deal with issues of our daily lives, and how we can turn otherwise bad situations into good ones.

INNER ENGINEERING: A YOGI’S GUIDE TO JOY BY SADHGURU

In  Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy , Sadhguru presents readers with a path to achieving absolute well-being through the classical science of yoga.

It is a means to create inner situations exactly the way you want them, turning you into the architect of your own joy.

CHANAKYA’S 7 SECRETS OF LEADERSHIP BY RADHAKRISHNAN PILLAI

Chanakya’s 7 Secrets of Leadership  puts forth a model for leadership drawn from the teachings of Chanakya who lived in the 4th Century BC, was prime minister and guru to one of India’s most powerful and successful emperors.

13 STEPS TO BLOODY GOOD LUCK BY ASHWIN SANGHI

In  13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck , Ashwin Sanghi explores that critical, much-longed-for element called luck.

Through entertaining and informative anecdotes, narrations of personal experiences and vignettes of homespun wisdom, Ashwin gives us a whole new insight into how people can work towards being lucky.

THE HABIT OF WINNING BY PRAKASH IYER

In  The Habit of Winning , you’ll find stories that can change the way you think, work, live.

Stories about leadership and teamwork, self-belief and perseverance. Life lessons from cola wars and cricket, Olympic heroes and ordinary folks.

THE WELLNESS SENSE BY OM SWAMI

Expounding on the esoteric aspects of ancient wisdom, in simple terms,  The Wellness Sense  shows you how to take care of yourself better and how to lead a healthier life in our present world — a world where we have all the comforts yet we are restless.

We have organic breakfast on the table but no time to eat it, we have the comfiest mattress but little sleep.

Best Indian Books on Travel and Places

Around india in 80 trains by monisha rajesh.

Taking a page out of Jules Verne’s classic tale, Around the World in 80 Days , Monisha Rajesh embarked on a 40,000km adventure  Around India in 80 trains .

Travelling a distance equivalent to the circumference of the Earth, she lifted the veil on a country that had become a stranger to her.

WHEN THE ROAD BECKONS BY RAVI MANORAM

When the Road Beckons  is an inspiring odyssey that promises to transform a generation.

Caught in the inescapable hurricane of life, the protagonist decides to snap out of the everyday mendacity and go on a 4000 km motorbike journey across Ladakh.

FOLLOWING FISH: TRAVELS AROUND THE INDIAN COAST BY SAMANTH SUBRAMANIAN

In a coastline as long and diverse as India’s, fish inhabit the heart of many worlds — food of course, but also culture, commerce, sport, history and society.

In  Following Fish , journeying along the edge of the peninsula, Samanth Subramanian reports upon a kaleidoscope of extraordinary stories.

HOT TEA ACROSS INDIA BY RISHAD SAAM MEHTA

There’s not a highway, road or dirt track in India where you can’t find a cup of chai whenever you want it.

And with those cuppas come encounters and incidents that make travelling in India a fascinating adventure.

In  Hot Tea Across India , Rishad takes you across the length and breadth of India, from Manali to Munnar, from the Rann of Kutch to Khajuraho, with a wonderful combination of wit, sensitivity and insight.

BATTLEFIELDS & PARADISE BY SABIR HUSSAIN

Battlefields and Paradise  is a travelogue in which the author writes about his trip from Delhi to Turtuk which is India’s northernmost point on the LoC.

On his journey, he rides a very ordinary bike, travels solo, engages in passionate talks with ordinary Kashmiris while learning about their daily lives and a bit or two about the politics of the state.

BUTTER CHICKEN IN LUDHIANA: TRAVELS IN SMALL TOWN INDIA BY PANKAJ MISHRA

In  Butter Chicken in Ludhiana , Pankaj Mishra captures an India which has shrugged off its sleepy, socialist air and has become instead kitschy, clamorous and ostentatious.

Pankaj paints a vivid picture of a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO GANGA BY RUSKIN BOND

The Ganges is a river which has held India’s heart captive and drawn uncounted millions to her banks since the dawn of history.

In  All Roads Lead to Ganga , Ruskin Bond captures the breathtaking beauty and splendour of Ganga, describing with nostalgia and affection the places and people he has lived with and encountered for over forty years.

THE HEAT AND DUST PROJECT BY DEVAPRIYA ROY

Saurav and Devapriya junk the swivel chairs, gain a couple of backpacks and set out on a transformational journey across India.

On a very, very tight budget: five hundred rupees a day for bed and board. And  The Heat and Dust Project  begins.

IF IT’S MONDAY IT MUST BE MADURAI BY SRINATH PERUR

This entertaining travelogue around ten conducted tours contains myriad riches: of hanging on to a camel in the Thar; rediscovering music on the trail of Kabir; joining an ancient pilgrimage, and hunting for sex in Tashkent.

THE LAND OF FLYING LAMAS BY GAURAV PUNJ

Beyond the hill stations, the mall roads and the ‘points’ is the ‘other Himalaya’ – a Himalaya where flowers bloom in the green rolling meadows, the streams are bubbly, no-pedal boats ply in the lakes, the glaciers can be felt and the passes crossed to more magical lands –  The Land of Flying Lamas .

We hope that you liked this list of the best English Novels by Indian Authors.

Other lists in this series:

75 of the Most Famous Indian Writers

11 Apps and Websites to Read Free Books Online

A Short Quiz on Books by Indian Authors

Rajmohan’s Wife by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in 1864

The Travels of Dean Mahomet by Sake Dean Mahomed in 1794. It was not a novel but an autobiographical

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

1. The Guide by R.K. Narayan; 2. Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan; 3. The Private Life of an Indian Prince by Mulk Raj Anand; 4. Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand; 5. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh; 6. Godan by Munshi Premchand; 7. The Room on the Roof by Ruskin Bond; 8. The Complete Adventures of Feluda by Satyajit Ray; 9. Combat of Shadows by Manohar Malgonkar; 10. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri

The Pulitzer Prize is only given to Americans. The Indian-Americans who have won the Pulitzer for writing are: 1. Jhumpa Lahiri for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies in the year 2000; 2. Siddhartha Mukherjee for his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer in the year 2011; 3. Vijay Seshadri for his collection of poems 3 Sections in the year 2014

1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy in 1997; 2. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai in 2006; 3. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga in 2008

Well, it’s not the US. The answer is INDIA. According to the NOP World Culture Score Index, India is the country that reads the most. An average Indian reads for 10 hours 42 minutes per week.

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About the Author

Father to Ahaana. Husband to Mayuri. Co-founder at bookGeeks. Engineer at BMM.

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• Editors Recommend

100 Best Books and Novels by Indian Authors

In a country as large and diverse as India, there is always a story waiting to be told. Which is why, we’ve saved you the trouble and put together some of the timeless gems that are available in Indian English writing today. Here are our top 100 picks, written by critically-acclaimed Indian authors, or authors of Indian origin.

In this brilliant retelling of the Ramayana, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita’s version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity, and honour, it is also about women’s struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men, as Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills.

Get your copy here!

The Far Field by  Madhuri Vijay 

Latitudes of Longing by  Shubhangi Swarup

An astounding exploration of intense longings, Shubhangi Swarup’s novel begins in the depths of the Andaman Sea, and follows geological and emotional faultlines through the Irrawaddy delta and the tourist-trap of Thamel, to end amidst the highest glaciers and passes of the Karakorams. The story sweeps through worlds and times that are inhabited by: a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who talks to them; Lord Goodenough who travels around the furthest reaches of the Raj, giving names to nameless places; a geologist working towards ending futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a superstitious dictator and a mother struggling to get her revolutionary son released; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who turns first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents.

Paper Moon by  Rehana Munir 

When her estranged father passes away, Fiza, fresh out of college, discovers that he has left her a tidy sum in the hope that she will open a bookshop… Overnight, Fiza’s placid life is thrown into a whirl of decor decisions and book-buying sprees, unconventional staff and colourful patrons, small pleasures and little heartbreaks, as the store — Paper Moon — begins to take shape in a charming, old Bandra mansion. To top it all, she is being wooed by Iqbal, a mysterious customer who frequents the shop, and Dhruv, her ex-boyfriend, her feelings for whom are still confused.

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters  by  Balli Kaur Jaswal 

The Shergill sisters never needed each other–until they did. Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina Shergill have never been close but when their mother dies, she has only one request: that they take a pilgrimage across India to carry out her final rites. While an extended family holiday is the last thing they want, each sister has her own reasons to run away from her life. Rajni is the archetypal know-it-all eldest but her son dropped a bombshell before she left and, for the first time, she doesn’t know what the future holds. Middle sister Jezmeen, always a loudmouth, has translated her need for attention into life as a struggling actress. But her career is on the skids after an incident went viral and now she’s desperate to find her voice again. Shirina, the golden child, has confounded expectations by having an arranged marriage and moving to the other side of the world. But her perfect life isn’t what it seems and time is running out to make the right choice. As the miles rack up on their jaunt across India, the secrets of the past and present are sure to spill out.

Adulting by  Neharika Gupta 

Social media manager and popular blogger Aisha is flirty and flamboyant … even as she battles personal demons that tell her she must stop eating if she wants to stay pretty.

Ruhi couldn’t be more different from her friend Aisha. Working at Literacy Publishing, she feels grossly underappreciated by the editor-in-chief, who happens to be her mother. What keeps her going are her own ambitions – and her handsome author Tejas.

Bestselling novelist Tejas has a bad case of writer’s block. He leans on Ruhi for emotional support before getting enamored by Aisha as he struggles to live up to everyone’s expectations, including his own.

The Swap by  Shuma Raha

There is nothing really wrong with Priya Bakshi and Akash Srivastav’s six-year-old marriage … except that Priya is having an affair. And Akash, too, seems to be on the lookout for sexual adventure. When Tarun, their richer, older, and manipulative friend, tells them about Delhi’s couple-swapping parties, Akash wants to jump right in. With some reluctance, Priya agrees to give him company. Soon, Priya and Akash find themselves in a world of swinging couples and sexual abandon, joined by friends who are equally keen to test the waters. But as the clothes come off and the secrets begin to tumble out, it seems that none of them will emerge unscathed.Witty and racy, The Swap is a sparkling social novel about sex, marriage, and morality.

Bhaunri by  Anukrti Upadhyay

Can too much love be a dangerous thing? Bhaunri is married, as is the custom in her tribe of nomadic blacksmiths when she is still a child. When she is finally sent away to her husband’s home as a young woman, she finds herself drawn deeply and powerfully towards the gruff and handsome Bheema. Bheema, however, is far from the ideal husband, and when he strays one time too many, Bhaunri’s love for him begins to fester and grow into something dark and fearsome.

The Twentieth Wife by  Indu Sundaresan 

Mehrunnisa – the Sun of Women – one of India’s most legendary and controversial empresses … a woman who overcame insurmountable obstacles through sheer brilliance and determination … whose love shaped the course of the Mughal Empire. She is the twentieth wife. The daughter of refugees from Persia, growing up on the fringes of Emperor Akbar’s opulent palace grounds, Mehrunnisa first encounters Prince Salim on his wedding day. Eight years old at the time, she decides that she too will one day become Salim’s wife – unaware of the great price she and her family will pay for this dream.

Those Pricey Thakur Girls by  Anuja Chauhan

From the bestselling author of The Zoya Factor and Battle for Bittora …

Spot-on funny and toe-curlingly sexy, Those Pricey Thakur Girls is rom-com specialist Anuja Chauhan writing at her sparkling best.

Baaz by  Anuja Chauhan

The USSR-backed India-Mukti Bahini alliance is on the brink of war against the America-aided Pakistani forces. As the Cold War threatens to turn red hot, handsome, laughing Ishaan Faujdaar, a farm boy from Chakkahera, Haryana, is elated to be in the IAF, flying the Gnat, a tiny fighter plane nicknamed ‘Sabre Slayer’ for the devastation it has wreaked in the ranks of Pakistan’s F-86 Sabre Squadrons. Flanked by his buddies Raks, a MiG-21 Fighter, Maddy, a transport pilot who flies a Caribou, and fellow Gnatties Jana, Gana, and Mana, Shaanu has nothing on his mind but glory and adventure – until he encounters Tehmina Dadyseth, famed bathing beauty and sister of a dead fauji, who makes him question the very concept of nationalism and whose eyes fill with disillusioned scorn whenever people wax eloquent about patriotism and war…Pulsating with love, laughter, and courage, Baaz is Anuja Chauhan’s tribute to our men in uniform.

The Radiance of a Thousand Sons by  Manreet Sodhi Someshwar 

Niki’s determination to complete her dead father’s unfinished book, his life’s work, takes her from India to New York City where her pursuit of a mysterious immigrant woman turns into an obsession that begins to imperil her daughter, her marriage, and, eventually, Niki herself. When a blizzard blankets NYC, Niki finds herself on a path where the present and past collide violently. Propulsive and poetic, this elegant literary thriller melds the fervour of Punjab with the frenzy of New York. Spanning the cataclysms of Partition and 9/11, via the brutality of Emergency and the pogrom of 1984, the novel explores the impossible choices women are forced to make in the face of violence, the ties that connect them across ages, and the secrets they store.

Jorasanko by  Aruna Chakravarti 

A sensitive portrayal of the hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats experienced by the women of the Tagore household. in a sprawling novel that spans a unique phase in the history of Bengal and India, Aruna Chakravarti provides a fascinating account of how the Tagore women influenced and were in turn influenced by their illustrious male counterparts, the times they lived in and the family they belonged to. Jorasanko mirrors the hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats that the women of the Tagore household experienced in their intricate interpersonal relationships, as well as the adjustments they were continually called upon to make as daughters and daughters-in-law of one of the most eminent families of the land.

The Mountain of Light by  Indu Sundaresan 

The much-awaited novel from the author of the bestselling Taj trilogy! Told in her inimitable trademark style, Indu Sundaresan’s The Mountain of Light is a wondrous and historically rich tale, as clear and as dazzling as a diamond itself.

Koi Good News? by  Zarreen Khan 

When Mona Mathur of Dehradun had married her college sweetheart Ramit Deol of Amritsar, there were two things she wasn’t prepared for:1. The size of the Deol family – it put any Sooraj Barjatiya movie to shame2. The fertility of the Deol family – they reproduce faster than any other species are known to mankind for four years now, Mona and Ramit have done the unthinkable and remained childless. Of course, that also means that they’ve battled that one question day in and day out: ‘Koi Good News?’ It doesn’t matter that they have been happy to be child-free – they are married; they are expected to make babies. After all, there are grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, and even colony aunties in waiting.

The Gypsy Goddess by  Meena Kandasamy

Village landlords force peasants to break their backs in the paddy fields or suffer beatings as punishment. So it is little wonder that the communist party begins to gain traction, a small spark of defiance spreading from villager to villager. As communities across the region begin to take a stand against the landlords, the landlords vow to break them: party organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of marketplace food dries up. But intimidation only serves to make the villagers’ resistance burn more fiercely. Finally, the landlords descend on one village to set an example to the others.

Nobody Killed Her by  Sabyn Javeri 

The nation sinks deep into mourning as news of former Prime Minister Rani Shah’s assassination arrives. Intelligence agencies, opposition leaders, the army top brass, her closest relatives – all seem to be shifting in their chairs even as special investigative teams gear up to file a report. Conspiracy theories abound for there were many who stood to gain if she pulled out of the imminent elections. The needle of suspicion points most immediately to Madam Shah’s close confidante Nazneen Khan, who was seen sitting right beside her in the convoy and, oddly, escaped the bomb blast unscathed. Sabyn Javeri’s tale of intense friendship between two ambitious women unfolds in a country steeped in fanaticism and patriarchy. Set against a backdrop of intrigue and political machinations, this is a novel about love, loyalty, obsession, and deception.

Daura by  Anukrti Upadhyay

A journey into the dark heart of the desert. A young District Collector is posted to one of the furthest outposts of rural Rajasthan and finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the lives and troubles of the common people there. Then one day, with the help of a mysterious musician, the Sarangiya, he has an encounter with beauty in its purest, most absolute form – an encounter that precipitates a dangerous descent. The pages from the journal he keeps are combined with the narratives of various people around him to create a compelling account of his slide away from reality.

Ghachar Ghochar by  Vivek Shanbhag ,  Srinath Perur

Cuckold by  Kiran Nagarkar 

The time is the early 16th century. The Rajput kingdom of Mewar is at the height of its power. It is locked in a war with the Sultanates of Delhi, Gujarat, and Malwa. But there is another deadly battle being waged within Mewar itself. who will inherit the throne after the death of the Maharana? The course of history, not just of Mewar but of the whole of India, is about to be changed forever

The White Tiger by  Aravind Adiga

Winner of the 2008 Booker Prize, now a major Netflix film starring Priyanka Chopra and Rajkumar RaoMeet Balram Halwai, the ‘white tiger’: servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer…

The White Tiger  is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing, and altogether unforgettable.

Selection Day by  Aravind Adiga 

Serious Men by  Manu Joseph

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People by  Manu Joseph 

Rumi: A New Translation by  Farrukh Dhondy 

Marked by the lyrical beauty and spiritual insight, a deep understanding of human suffering that coexists with rapturous abandon, the poems of Jalaluddin Rumi continue to be relevant almost eight centuries after they were composed, with contemporary audiences finding new meanings in them. Rumi’s poems bring together the divine and the human, the mystical and the corporeal to create a vivid kaleidoscope of poetic images.

India’s Most Haunted by  K. Hari Kumar 

There are places where the past lingers, making shapes in the moonlight and blowing in the curtains even as the air goes suddenly still. K. Hari Kumar, the bestselling author of spine-chilling horror fiction, brings you the terrifying tales of some of India’s most haunted places – including Bhangarh Fort, Malabar Hill’s Tower of Silence, and Jammu and Kashmir’s notorious Khooni Nala. Whether you read them at night or in daylight, these stories will remain with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Best Indian Short Stories by  Khushwant Singh

Dopehri by  Pankaj Kapur 

The Belated Bachelor Party   by  Ravinder Singh

Parliamental by  Meghnad S.

Raghav Marathe, cynical millennial turned reluctant policy analyst, arrives in Delhi with his boss, Prabhu Srikar of the RJM party, and a first-time MP with a tendency to throw up. As they navigate their way around Parliament, handling backroom deals, nepotistic party heads, and laws that seem to be tailor-made to benefit the ruling party, they learn that politics and idealism don’t always go together. While Srikar tries to adapt to his new avatar and lie low, Raghav uses his Twitter alter ego, @Arnavinator, to vent his frustration and spread chaos.But when a new bill that threatens freedom of expression is bulldozed through with impunity, Srikar and Raghav must make a choice – to compromise on their values or to stand up for what is right. But at what cost? And can they and their unlikely allies – a jaded lawyer, an ambitious journalist and a rising YouTube star – really make a difference?

Best Indian Short Stories: Volume 2 by  Khushwant Singh 

India’s Wars by  Arjun Subramaniam

The Japanese Wife by  Basu Kunal

An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. The pen-friends fall in love and exchange their vows over letters, then live as man and wife without ever setting eyes on each other – their intimacy of words tested finally by life’s miraculous upheavals.The twelve stories in this collection are about the unexpected. An American professor visits India with the purpose of committing suicide, and goes on a desert journey with the daughter of a snake-charmer. A honeymooning Indian couple is caught up in the Tiananmen Square unrest. A Russian prostitute discovers her roots in the company of Calcutta revolutionaries. A holocaust victim stands tall among strangers in a landscape of hate. These are chronicles of memory and dreams born at the crossroads of civilizations. They parade a cast of angels and demons rubbing shoulders with those whose lives are never quite as ordinary as they seem.

14: Stories That Inspired Satyajit Ray by  Bhaskar Chattopadhyay 

Narasimha by  Kevin Missal 

Narasimha, once a brave soldier, has left the war and lies low as a physician in a village. But a familiar face from his past seeks his help to stop the tyranny of the blind usurper Andhaka. If Narasimha refuses, the world might just end. What will he do? And why did he leave the war in the first place? Prahlad, the interim king of Kashyapuri, is torn between the ideals of his unrighteous father and his love for Lord Vishnu. Whom will he choose? Hiranyakashyap, the ruler of the Asura Empire, wants to avenge the death of his wife. To do that, he must go through the Trials and get the ultimate weapon – the Brahmastra. But the Trials have sent so many others to their death. Can Hiranyakashyap survive?

Pather Panchali by  Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay

Pather Panchali is a vivid, moving and authentic portrayal of the life of a Brahmin household seen through the eyes of the two young children of the family, Opu and his elder sister Durga. Few authors in any literature can rival Bandhopadhyaya’s understanding of the child mind.

Ivory Throne by  Manu S. Pillai 

In 1498, when Vasco da Gama set foot in Kerala looking for Christians and spices, he unleashed a wave of political fury that would topple local powers like a house of cards. The cosmopolitan fabric of a vibrant trading society – with its Jewish and Arab merchants, Chinese pirate heroes and masterful Hindu Zamorins – was ripped apart, heralding an age of violence and bloodshed. One prince, however, emerged triumphant from this descent into chaos. Shrewdly marrying Western arms to Eastern strategy, Martanda Varma consecrated the dominion of Travancore, destined to become one of the most dutiful pillars of the British Raj. What followed was two centuries of internecine conflict in one of India’s premier princely states, culminating in a dynastic feud between two sisters battling to steer the fortunes of their house on the eve of Independence.

The Twice-born by  Aatish Taseer 

When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition. Known as the twice-born – first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation – the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, among the blossoming cotton trees and the bathers and burning corpses of the Ganges, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.

Solo by  Rana Dasgupta 

Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine. A group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by this discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists might record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatised by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way. Wondering if, unlike these hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, one-hundred-year-old Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through the twists and turns of his country’s turbulent century – and through his own century of lost love and failed chemistry – and finds his way to an astonishing epiphany of redemption and enlightenment.

Sex, Scotch & Scholarship by  Khushwant Singh  

In this anthology, which comprises some of Khushwant Singh’s best writing, you can look forward to some talk of sex, a little of scotch and much scholarship. The collection attempts to mirror the author’s concerns and passions-his love of nature, his anguish over the situation in Punjab, his interest in religions of the world, and his scholarly research on the one into which he was born, Sikhism.

Darkness by  Ratnakar Matkari 

A boy who can predict the exact date a person will die… An elderly woman who knows that death is close, but learns how to cheat it… A child with a dangerous friend who happens to be invisible… A ghost who can’t stop reliving his suicide over and over again…People you’ll wish you never have to meet, and stories you’ll never forget.

Accidental Magic by  Keshava Guha 

Dozakhnama by  Rabisankar Bal

Who tells the greatest story God or Manto? Dozakhnama: Conversations in Hell is an extraordinary novel, a biography of Manto and Ghalib and a history of Indian culture rolled into one. Exhumed from dust, Manto’s unpublished novel surfaces in Lucknow. Is it real or is it a fake? In this dastan, Manto and Ghalib converse, entwining their lives in shared dreams. The result is an intellectual journey that takes us into the people and events that shape us as a culture. As one writer describes it, I discovered Rabisankar Bal like a torch in the darkness of the history of this subcontinent. This is the real story of two centuries of our own country.

Shivaji: The Great Maratha  by  Ranjit Desai 

 Young Shivaji reaches Pune, a dying fort city, with his mother Jijabai and lights the first lamp within its ruins. While his father Shahaji Bhosle is away on deputation by the Adil Shah sultanate after having failed in a revolt against it, Shivaji learns how an empire is built from the ground up. Thus begins the life of the Great Maratha. What awaits Shivaji is nothing short of the vast scroll of history, and it takes him from Surat to Thanjavur and all the way to Aurangzeb’s durbar in Agra. He dreams of freeing his land from the clutches of Mughal rule, and though he suffers many defeats and personal losses along the way he never gives up his vision of Hindavi Swaraj. Amidst political intrigue and a chain of skirmishes, Shivaji becomes a leader, a warrior and a tactician par excellence, driven by immense pride and love for his motherland.

Inheritance by  Balli Kaur Jaswal

Fifteen-year-old Amrit disappears from her house in the middle of the night and returns a different person. Over the next two decades, her actions affect three generations of her Sikh family in Singapore. When Narain, her brother, leaves his new life in America to take care of her, he must find his place again in a country and a community that will not accept him for who he is. Gurdev, the eldest, raises his three daughters with fear and caution over what they might become. And Harbeer, whose wife has left him, is the unyielding patriarch who must reconcile his pride and learn to cope with his own demons.

Sugar bread by  Balli Kaur Jaswal 

Ten-year-old Pin knows she must not become like her mother Jini but doesn’t know why. She tries to figure out her mother’s moods through her cooking, even as she fights other battles-being a bursary student in an elite Christian school, facing hateful racial taunts from Bus Uncle and classmates like Abigail Goh.

When her meddlesome Nani ji Kulwant moves in, installing portraits of Sikh gurus whose features seem the change according to the atmosphere in the house, she brings with her a new set of rules. And old secrets begin to tumble out.

Strangers to Ourselves by  Shashi Deshpande

 Set in Mumbai, Shashi Deshpande’s novel tells the story of an unlikely love between two unusual people. Tender and tempestuous by turns, it draws you into the conflicts, languid pleasures and sharp sorrows of falling in love with a stranger who can never entirely be yours.

Ravan and Eddie  by  Kiran Nagarkar

An extremely funny novel about two larger-than-life heroes and their bawdy, Rabelaisian adventures in post-colonial urban India. Ravan and Eddie remain one of the finest books written with Mumbai as a backdrop. It’s uproariously funny, outrageously irreverent … [and] reveals the city as a character, an actor, a living being.

The Extras by  Kiran Nagarkar 

Ravan and Eddie are back! They’ve been mortal enemies since birth because of a bizarre family feud. But now Ravan and Eddie’s lives converge as they share an obsession: having grown up in Bombay, the city of dancing movie stars and glitzy glamour, both dream of strutting down the road to superstardom. Can Ravan (a lowly taxi driver) and Eddie (a bouncer-cum-bartender at a speakeasy) rise from their dusty CWD chawls to the glittering heights of international fame?

Home Boy by  H.M. Naqvi 

Rollicking, bittersweet and sharply observed, Home Boy is at once an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, a story of love and loss as well as a unique meditation on Americana and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.

Girl in White Cotton by   Avni Doshi 

Antara has never understood her mother Tara’s decisions – walking out on her marriage to follow a guru, living on the streets like a beggar, shacking up with an unknown artist, rebelling against society’s expectations … But when Tara starts losing her memory, Antara searches for a way to make peace with their shared past, a past that haunts them both.

As she relives her childhood in Pune in the eighties, the time she spent at a Catholic boarding school in the hills of Maharashtra, and her years as a young artist in Bombay, Antara comes up against her own fears and neuroses, realizing she might not be so different from Tara after all.

The Last Queen by  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 

The latest from the bestselling author of The Forest of Enchantments …

While we have all heard tales of Rani Lakshmi Bai and Padmavati, not many of us are familiar with another Indian queen.

Daughter of the royal kennel keeper, the beautiful Jindan Kaur went on to become Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s youngest and last queen; his favorite. She became regent when her son Dalip, barely six years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, passionate, and dedicated to protecting her son’s heritage, Jindan distrusted the British and fought hard to keep them from annexing Punjab. Defying tradition, she stepped out of the zenana, cast aside the veil, and conducted state business in public. Addressing her Khalsa troops herself, she inspired her men in two wars against the ‘firangs’. Her power and influence were so formidable that the British, fearing an uprising, robbed the rebel queen of everything she had, including her son. She was imprisoned and exiled. But that did not crush her indomitable will.

The Householder by Amitabha Bagchi

With uncommon acuity, Amitabha Bagchi writes of a world where favours are currency, where access to power sometimes feels like a prerequisite for survival, where power can be both total and ephemeral. The Householder is a view from within this world, an examination of the moral condition of our times.

Above Average by  Amitabh Bagchi 

Lyrical, spare, and charmingly self-deprecatory Amitabha Bagchi’s debut novel is a deeply funny account of growing up intelligent, sensitive, ambitious, and confused.

What Maya Saw: A Tale of Shadows, Secrets, Clues by  Shabnam Minwalla 

Almost from the moment, Maya steps into St Paul’s College, she is afraid. Everywhere she goes, she encounters questions and secrets. Not to mention the Shadows – a bunch of drop-dead gorgeous students who she realizes will do anything to keep their youth and beauty. Even kill. Maya wants no part in this sinister adventure. She would much rather be shopping for shoes, munching brownies and shedding her geeky image. But the teenager soon finds that she doesn’t have a choice. Only Maya can see the Shadows for what they really are. Only she can unravel the trail of clues laid long ago by a dead priest. This is why both the forces of good and evil need her so badly. Unsure about whom she can trust and believe, Maya launches into a clue hunt across Mumbai – and in the process, learns about love, friendship and growing up.

The Mountain of Light  by  Indu Sundaresan 

Battle For Bittora by  Anuja Chauhan 

Twenty-five-year-old Jinni lives in Mumbai, works in a hip animation studio and is perfectly happy with her carefree life. Until her bossy grandmother shows up and announces that it is Jinni’s ‘duty’ to drop everything and come and contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from their sleepy hometown, Bittora. Jinni swears she won’t but she soon ends up swathed in cotton saris and frumpy blouses, battling prickly heat, corruption and accusations of nymphomania as candidate Sarojini Pande, a daughter of the illustrious Pande dynasty of Pavit Pradesh. And if life isn’t fun enough already, her main opposition turns out to be Bittora ex-royal, Zain Altaf Khan – an irritatingly idealistic though undeniably lustworthy individual with whom Jinni shares a complicated history.

A Feast Of Roses by  Indu Sundaresan

In this lush and romantic sequel to The Twentieth Wife , Mehrunnisa, the first woman Jahangir marries for love, is now Empress Nur Jahan. As a mark of his love, he transfers his powers of sovereignty to her. This is the story of the strength of character and cunning one woman has to demonstrate to get what she wants, sometimes at great personal cost, even almost losing her daughter’s love. But she never loses the love of the man who bestows this power upon her: Emperor Jahangir.

Shadow Princess by  Indu Sundaresan 

The Mughal Empire is crumbling. With the death of his beloved queen Mumtaz, Emperor Shah Jahan slowly loses interest in everything, while his sons conspire and scheme to gain control of the empire. Princess Jahanara is only seventeen when the weight of the imperial zenana is thrust upon her. Shah Jahan’s favorite daughter is the most important woman in the harem and is forced to remain at the Mughal court all her life, caught up in the intrigues and power politics of her siblings, sacrificing her own desires for the sake of her father.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by   Balli Kaur Jaswal 

Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Pick! Balli Kaur Jaswal’s sexy, lively book is a thought-provoking East-meets-West story about community, friendship, and women’s lives at all ages—a spicy and alluring mix of  Together Tea  and  Calendar Girls.

The Glass Palace by  Amitav Ghosh 

The Hungry Tide by  Amitav Ghosh 

From the author of The Glass Palace and Jungle Nama , the widely-acclaimed bestseller. The Hungry Tide is a rich, exotic saga set in Calcutta and in the vast archipelago of islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Cut Like Wound by  Anita Nair

Chain of Custody by  Anita Nair

Alphabet Soup for Lovers by  Anita Nair 

Idris: Keeper of the Light by  Anita Nair

The year is 1659. Idris, a Somalian trader, is in Kerala to attend the Mamangam festivities. By a strange twist of fate, he meets his nine-year-old son whose existence he had been unaware of. In an attempt to keep his son close to him, Idris embarks with him on a voyage that ends in the diamond mines of Golconda. Packed with passion, adventure, and fascinating aspects of life in the seventeenth century in southern India, Idris is a page-turner that will intrigue and excite readers everywhere.

The Liberation of Sita by  Volga 

Valmiki’s Ramayana is the story of Rama’s exile and returns to Ayodhya, of a triumphant king who will always do right by his subjects. In Volga’s retelling, it is Sita who, after being abandoned by Purushottam Rama, embarks on an arduous journey towards self-realization. Along the way, she meets extraordinary women who have broken free from all that held them back: husbands, sons, and their notions of desire, beauty, and chastity. The minor women characters of the epic as we know it — Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila, and Ahalya — steer Sita towards an unexpected resolution. Meanwhile, Rama too must reconsider and weigh his roles as the king of Ayodhya and as a man deeply in love with his wife.

Red Maize by  Danesh Rana

The Golden Pigeon by  Shahid Siddiqui 

The Sibius Knot by  Amrita Tripathi 

The Second Coming by  Shubha Menon 

Mad Girl’s Love Song by   Rukumini Bhaya Nair

The Namesake by  Jhumpa Lahiri 

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 

A couple exchange unprecedented confessions during nightly blackouts in their Boston apartment as they struggle to cope with a heartbreaking loss; a student arrives in new lodgings in a mystifying new land and, while he awaits the arrival of his arranged marriage wife from Bengal, he finds his first bearings with the aid of the curious evening rituals that his centenarian landlady orchestrates; a schoolboy looks on while his childminder finds that the smallest dislocation can unbalance her new American life all too easily and send her spiraling into nostalgia for her homeland…

Anita and Me by  Meera Syal 

It’s 1972. Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington, ‘the jewel of the Black Country’. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village, her daily struggle for independence is different from most. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities – but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang.

Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour.

The Wounds of the Dead by  Vikram Paralkar 

A surgeon working in a dilapidated clinic in the hinterland is visited in the dead of night by a family – a man, his pregnant wife and their eight-year-old son. Victims of a senseless attack, they reveal to the surgeon wounds that they could not possibly have survived. In a narrative that blends medicine and metaphysics, the surgeon is then issued a preposterous task: to mend the wounds of the dead before sunrise so that the family can return to life. But this is not the only challenge laid before him, and it is only as the night unfolds and morning dawns that the surgeon realizes just how intricately his future is tied to that of the dead.

Moustache by  S. Hareesh

No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories   by  Jayant Kaikini

One Point Two Billion by  Mahesh Rao

Ice Boys In Bell Bottoms by  Krishna Shastri Devulapalli 

A Southern Music by  T.M. Krishna

Farthest Field by  Raghu Karnad 

The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother’s house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India’s fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby’s pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront.

The Henna Artist by  Alka Joshi

Think Like a Monk by  Jay Shetty 

In this inspiring, empowering book, Shetty draws on his time as a monk in the Vedic tradition to show us how we can clear the roadblocks to our potential and power. Drawing on ancient wisdom and his own rich experiences in the ashram, “ Think Like a Monk ” reveals how to overcome negative thoughts and habits, and access the calm and purpose that lie within all of us.

The lessons monks learn are profound but often abstract. Shetty transforms them into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, improve focus, improve relationships, identify our hidden abilities, increase self-discipline and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world. Shetty proves that everyone can – and should – think like a monk.

Things No One Else Can Teach Us by  Humble the Poet 

Hit Refresh: A Memoir by Microsoft’s CEO   by  Satya Nadella 

Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life by  Humble the Poet 

Inferior by  Angela Saini 

From intelligence to emotion, for centuries science has told us that men and women are fundamentally different. But this is not the whole story.

Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered. She explores what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, revealing an alternative view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded.

Quantum Marketing by  Raja Rajamannar

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31 Outstanding Fiction Books by Indian Authors

• Monday, September 14, 2020

Mark Twain has said, "India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most artistic materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!"

Apart from travel,the next best way to learn about a country and its people is through its books. india has several accomplished and award winning authors who have weaved magical works of fiction. these books spin stories with universal themes and take you on a ride from life in villages to  the hustle and bustle of big cities, from the dazzling splendor of historical monuments to  the glitz and glamour of bollywood, from tales of immigrating to foreign lands to stories of political upheaval and unrest in the motherland, from arranged marriages to falling in love; every book in this list is eye opening, well written and worth reading., do browse this book list of indian authors old and new; a mix of classics and contemporary fiction. you can learn more about a title by clicking on the link which will take you to its full display in our catalog. from here, you can also place holds on the books you wish to read..

Destination Wedding

English, August

The House of Blue Mangoes

Fasting, Feasting

The Inheritance of Loss

The Bollywood Bride

One Amazing Thing

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

Train to Pakistan

The Namesake

Nectar in a Sieve

When Dimple Met Rishi

A Fine Balance

A Rising Man

Miss New India

The Lives of Others

A House for Mr. Biswas

A Tiger for Malgudi

You Bring the Distant Near

Girl Gone Viral

The God of Small Things

Midnight's Children

The Year of the Runaways

A Suitable Boy

The Space Between Us

The Far Field

Research and Readers Advisory Professional

Loves learning about other cultures and broadening her reading horizons through a vast selection of multicultural fiction.

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Article contents

The indian novel in the 21st century.

• Amardeep Singh Amardeep Singh Lehigh University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.414
• Published online: 26 February 2018

The Indian novel has been a vibrant and energetic expressive space in the 21st century. While the grand postcolonial gestures characteristic of the late-20th-century Indian novel have been in evidence in new novels by established authors such as Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, and Salman Rushdie, a slate of new authors has emerged in this period as well, charting a range of new novelistic modes. Some of these authors are Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga, Githa Hariharan, Samina Ali, Karan Mahajan, and Amitava Kumar. In general, there has been a move away from ambitious literary fiction in the form of the “huge, baggy monster” that led to the publication of several monumental postcolonial novels in the 1980s and 1990s; increasingly the most dynamic and influential Indian writing uses new novelistic forms and literary styles tied to the changing landscape of India’s current contemporary social and political problems. The newer generation of authors has also eschewed the aspiration to represent the entirety of life in modern India, and instead aimed to explore much more limited regional and cultural narrative frameworks. If a novel like Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) took its protagonist all over the Indian subcontinent and indexed a large number of important historical controversies in the interest of broad representation, Padma Viswnanathan’s The Toss of a Lemon (2008) limits itself to a focus on a single Tamil Brahmin family’s orientation to issues of caste and gender, and remains effectively local to Tamil Nadu. There is no central agenda or defining idiom of this emerging literary culture, but three major groupings can be identified that encapsulate the major themes and preoccupations of 21st-century Indian fiction: “New Urban Realism,” “Gender and Secular History,” and “Globalizing India, Reinscribing the Past.”

• globalization
• world literature
• South Asian literature
• postcolonial India
• national allegory
• mass market fiction

The Indian novel has been a vibrant and energetic expressive space in the 21st century . While the grand “postcolonial” gestures characteristic of some of the most influential 20th-century Indian novels have been in evidence in new novels by established authors like Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, and Salman Rushdie, a slate of new authors has emerged in this period as well, charting out a range of new novelistic modes. In general, there has been a move away from ambitious literary fiction in the form of the “huge, baggy monster” that led to the publication of several monumental postcolonial novels in the 1980s and 1990s (Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children [ 1981 ], Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy [ 1993 ], and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance [ 1995 ] being three cases in point). Such novels are still being published—two noteworthy examples might be Chandra’s Sacred Games ( 2006 ), and Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy ( 2008–2015 )—but increasingly the most dynamic and influential Indian writing is exploring new novelistic forms and literary styles. Amit Chaudhari once described the “large, postmodernist Indian English novel” as pursuing a “mimesis of form, where the largeness of the book allegorizes the largeness of the country it represents.” 1 Another version of this idea might be Fredric Jameson’s much-debated “national allegory” concept. 2 Admittedly, not all Indian novelists writing in English even in the 1980s and 1990s aspired toward the baggy nationalist allegory; Chaudhuri himself is a case in point. Still, in the most exciting new Indian fiction published since 2000 , the newer generation of authors has eschewed the aspiration to represent the entirety of life in modern India, and instead aimed to explore much more limited regional and cultural narrative frameworks. There is no central agenda or defining idiom of this emerging literary culture—and that is in some ways the point—though three major groupings take up some of the major themes of Indian literature of the early 21st century : “New Urban Realism,” “Gender and Religion,” and “Globalizing India, Reinscribing the Past.” To be clear, these are loose groupings introduced that help describe some important new trends in Indian fiction. In actuality, most texts have elements of more than one of these thematic areas, with some (for instance, Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness ) straddling all three.

The focus here will largely be on novels written in English, for reasons that will be explored in greater detail in the note on language below. Also, it seems important to state that the emphasis here is on Indian novels, rather than Indian diaspora fiction. Thus, diaspora-oriented fiction by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri or Chitra Divakaruni is not our concern in the present essay; the primary interest is in contemporary novels that are set in India, and that can be seen as contributing to the conversation about Indian literature occurring within India in some way. That said, it seems salient to note that here no analytical distinction is made between writers who are based primarily in India and those who are based abroad. Thus, because they are set entirely in India, books like Padma Viswanathan’s The Toss of a Lemon ( 2008 ) or Chandra’s Sacred Games should be considered “Indian” novels even if their authors live in the United States.

First, a brief section on language (which seems essential in the highly linguistically complicated universe of Indian literature), and the growth of domestic Indian markets for fiction, which has led to the realignment of the Indian publishing industry.

A Note on Language

India has about twenty different literary languages. The linguistic limitations of critics, including the author of the present essay, are likely to be an issue in most literary studies of Indian literature, which cannot be understood as a singular national literary tradition in the manner of the European traditions. Rather, Indian literature must be understood as internally comparative , and any analysis that claims to represent it in its entirety (and, to be clear, the present essay is not making that claim) must be comparative. All that said, English remains the dominant language for Indian literature, at least in terms of the economy of public prestige. Writers in Indian languages frequently complain that their works remain unknown outside of India, unreviewed, and largely unread by the country’s most educated readers. In a recent collection of short stories, Hindi writer Uday Prakash made his complaint about the secondary status of Hindi literature palpable: “When the English were here, it was English that made us into slaves. Now that the English are gone, it’s Hindi that’s turned us into slaves.” 3

Thanks to colonialism, a large number of Indians speak English, and English is widely taught in schools. However, even optimistic assessments suggest that approximately 10 percent of India’s population (more than 100 million people) has some knowledge of the English language, though it is likely that only a small minority of those English-speakers have enough proficiency to be readers of English-language literature. 4 Accurate data to quantify the size of different linguistic literary markets operating in India is also lacking. While there are no hard numbers regarding publishing sales in India—nor is there an official, nationwide “bestsellers list” that crosses linguistic boundaries—the pulp fiction market in such languages as Hindi and Tamil is believed to be much larger than the domestic market for English-language writing. However, much Hindi pulp fiction is sold quite cheaply; an English-language novel might be sold in prestige chain bookstores like Crosswords for ten or even twenty times the price of a work of Tamil or Hindi fiction. It is fair to assume that writers like Prakash (an author of serious literary fiction in Hindi) are not receiving the six-figure advances that writers like Arundhati Roy or Vikram Chandra have been known to get from western publishers.

Several writers in Indian languages have been influential with Indian critics in recent years, including the aforementioned Prakash (Hindi), Geet Chaturvedi (Hindi), Vyomesh Shukla (Hindi), and Vivek Shanbhag (Kannada). Several of these writers have been at least partially translated into English, with notable translations of Prakash ( The Girl With the Golden Parasol [ 2003 ] and Walls of Delhi [ 2008 ]) and Shanbhag ( Ghachar Ghochar [ 2017 ]) appearing in recent years.

Even within English, the language of Indian fiction has been changing in recent years. While earlier postcolonial fiction incorporated italicized words from Indian languages sparingly (and often with supplementary glossaries), many writers in the post- 2000 generation of Indian English fiction use a version of English that is much closer to the version of Indian English spoken in contemporary India—with a frequently intense sprinkling of terms and ideas from Indian languages that are presented matter-of-factly and without annotation. Moreover, writers Amitava Kumar and Aravind Adiga have written with considerable self-consciousness and sophistication about the challenge of achieving authenticity while writing in English. In Kumar’s novel Home Products (published in the United States as Nobody Does the Right Thing ), the protagonist Binod Singh begins his career as a Hindi-language journalist and struggles to make the transition to English, even as he is only too ready to bask in the prestige offered by access to India’s elite, English-speaking world. After making the jump to English, Binod finds that everyday life in rural, Hindi-speaking northern India does not seem to register for him in the same way in English as it did when he wrote in Hindi: “Nevertheless, while writing entirely in English, Binod found that he could not talk very easily about villages and small towns. He lacked the idiom to express his feelings directly about harvests or heavy rains that led to flooding, the excitement and then the numbing that followed the news of another caste massacre.” 5 The suggestion is that while English may be the medium of choice for Kumar and Adiga, one has to be self-conscious about its limits as a representational tool for the so-called real India. The growing heterogeneity of Indian-English voices and idioms is not necessarily an unambiguously good thing for India’s other literary languages; it also seems to have developed alongside the decline of the prospect of any serious contestation of English as India’s dominant literary language.

While an earlier generation of postcolonial Indian authors often complained that they needed the status of western publication to really break through and gain a broad readership and interest amongst Indian readers, the presumption of western publishing dominance is beginning to shift. The domestic Indian publishing industry continues to gain steam, with growing numbers of new authors being published each year independent of their status or connection to the West. While earlier it was routine for an Indian author to aim for first publication in London or New York, the most commercially successful new Indian writers (i.e., Chetan Bhagat) are increasingly finding interest from western publishers after they have already established themselves as popular brands in India itself.

Far and away, the author most identified with the growth in the domestic Indian publishing market is one likely to be totally unknown in the west, Chetan Bhagat. In the 2000s, Bhagat published seven popular novels and two nonfiction books. Several of the novels have either been produced as commercial Hindi films; in some cases, Bhagat himself was involved in the screenplay. One Night @ the Call Center ( 2005 ) takes a prominent feature of globalizing India—the Internet-based call centers that were set up by multinational corporations in urban centers largely to service the needs of western consumers—and uses it as a framing device to explore the troubles of a group of young Indians. Other Bhagat novels set on college campuses have made the generational focus of his fiction even more direct ( Five Point Someone [ 2004 ] and 2 States [ 2009 ]). These novels have been notable for Bhagat’s willingness to take on various social issues of importance to metropolitan readers (cross-regional romance in 2 States , the problems of stress and hazing in Indian universities in Five Point Someone , the problem of religious intolerance in The 3 Mistakes of My Life [ 2008 ]), generally packaged as entertainment for the masses).

Bhagat is well aware that his success has had more to do with the tastes of the masses than with India’s cosmopolitan critics (“The book critics, they all hate me,” he quipped to the New York Times in 2008 ). 6 The scale of his success—one statistic indicates that he has sold more than twelve million books—is orders of magnitude greater than that of the most commercially successful writer of serious literary fiction in recent years, Aravind Adiga. 7 Adiga’s novels and short story collections have been considered publishing successes, though his success within India has followed the Rushdie-Roy model in that is has been a consequence of his status as a Booker Prize–winning author respected by western critics. Adiga’s The White Tiger sold 200,000 copies after Adiga won the 2008 Booker Prize, but his subsequent collection Between the Assassinations had a much smaller initial print run. 8

Since 2000 , there has been a rapid expansion of genre fiction in the Anglophone Indian fiction market. While pulp fiction has always been part of fiction written in Indian languages, genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and the military/espionage thriller were underserved, especially for prestige-oriented consumers of English-language fiction. With the rise of a new generation of writers like Samit Basu (the Gameworld Trilogy ; Turbulence [ 2012 ]; Resistance [ 2013 ]), there has been a rapid growth of interest in domestic science fiction. Basu’s later novels are particularly noteworthy in that they rework the conventions of the western superhero story for Indian readers. As Basu put it in an interview on Resistance : “the American superhero story is usually about protecting and preserving the world, with the villain as the agent of change, but I saw no reason to apply that to the Indian subcontinent, where the status quo is really not something that calls for preservation.” 9 Fantasy has also become quite popular among English-language Indian readers, with the emergence of Amish Tripathi (see his hugely popular Shiva Trilogy [ 2010–2013 ]), and Ashok Banker (the Ramayana Series 2003–2010 ). Finally, writers with strong journalistic credentials have also tried their hand at military and espionage fiction oriented specifically towards male readers; one thinks of Aniruddha Bahal’s Bunker 13 ( 2003 ) and Tarun Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins ( 2009 ).

Alongside the growth of genre fiction, the 2000s have seen the emergence of a large market in graphic novels. Some of these follow the trend towards superhero narratives (and indeed, several authors in the genre fiction market have also published comics), often with a nod toward Indian mythology, mentioned with reference to genre fiction above. Alongside more popular entertainments (comics) a number of graphic novels with a more literary sensibility have also emerged, including Amruta Patil’s Kari ( 2008 ), and Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm ( 2010 ). Vishwajyoti Ghosh also edited a collection of graphic Partition narratives, This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition ( 2013 ).

There is no doubt that the market of Indian fiction in English has been evolving in recent years, and there are good reasons to expect it to continue to evolve. The steady growth in the number of English-language readers in India, the advent of mass-market Indian authors like Bhagat, and the proliferation of genres in recent years, suggest that there are reasons to be optimistic. However, the advent of digital marketplaces, widespread piracy, and the increasing pervasiveness of a middle-class culture increasingly addicted to social media and digital devices leave some uncertainty regarding the future prospects for authors, publishers, and booksellers in India.

The New Urban Realism

The new urban realism in Indian fiction features a highly realistic style that gives precedence to local details and often an emphasis on regional cities like Patna or Hyderabad, rather than national metropolitan centers (i.e., Delhi and Mumbai). The style also tends to feature an encounter with themes of criminality, violence, corruption, and an open-eyed acceptance of liberal Indian hypocrisy (especially in an era of simultaneous wealth accumulation and urban slum growth) and double standards around topics such as caste and religious biases. The starting point for the burst of writing that emphasized this style might well be a nonfiction book, Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found ( 2004 ). That book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 , caused a sensation both among western readers and readers in India. Mehta’s ability to get forthright accounts of police-targeted killings (“encounters”), Bombay gangsters, sex workers, corrupt politicians, and the implication of Bollywood movie stars and producers in all of it set loose a flood of interest in this type of material. Many of the authors we associate with the New Urban Realism are also interested in the tension between state violence and various forms of religious radicalization that feed terrorism. In some ways, the New Urban Realism might be the Indian analogue to “post 9/11 fiction” in the British and American publishing worlds. Finally, it seems important to acknowledge that the New Urban Realism can be seen as a way for a new generation of authors to differentiate itself from what came before; the subgenre generally eschews fanciful elements such as the old magic realism of Rushdie or the preciosity of Roy’s God of Small Things ( 1997 ). While the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire was most directly an adaptation of Vikas Swarup’s Q&A ( 2005 ), the producers and screenplay writers of that hit film have freely admitted that they were also thinking of Maximum City in their depiction of Mumbai street crime. Intriguingly, while the over-the-top reception of Roy’s first novel set it up as a text that more recent novelists might position themselves against, Roy’s most recent novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness ( 2017 ), might actually be seen as participating in a form of urban realism.

Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize–winning The White Tiger encapsulates the trend towards the new urban realism (though it also can be read as a novel of globalization). Adiga has a typically complex personal history that speaks to the globality of his approach to modern India: He was born in Chennai, raised partly in Australia, and studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities. He worked in India as a journalist for several years, and has indicated that his travels, especially to rural India, were what inspired him to write The White Tiger . This novel playfully uses a first-person conceit to follow the rise of a poor man of low-caste background from his modest upbringing in a rural part of the “backward” state of Bihar (described in Adiga’s novel as the “Darkness”) to a very wealthy and powerful situation in metropolitan Delhi—and eventually the tech hub that is today’s Bangalore.

Some critics have noted that the method of Adiga’s novel, with its polished style and its play on American “get rich quick” self-help books, might in fact replicate the very marginalization of rural and impoverished areas of Indian society that the novel seems to be questioning. While Adiga’s account of globalizing modern India is precise and carefully marked, his accounts of the “Darkness” tend towards the abstract. As Amitava Kumar noted in his critique of the book, there is little in the novel’s account of rural Bihar that reflects the protagonist’s supposed intimate connection to it. 10 Another critic, Sanjay Surahhmanyam, has questioned the sleight-of-hand that has allowed Adiga to put forward a first-person narrative authored by an individual who, the novel tells us, isn’t really fluent in English: “We are meant to believe—even within the conventions of the realist novel—that a person who must really function in Maithili or Bhojpuri can express his thoughts seamlessly in a language that he doesn’t speak.” 11

Another line of criticism that overlaps with Subrahmanyam’s could be made regarding the novel’s sometimes fraught relationship to narrative realism. To wit, in a passage early in the novel, Adiga’s protagonist Balram Halwai seems remarkably self-conscious about his uneasy belonging in modern India: “Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas.” Many readers have noted that this first person account of seems psychologically implausible. Arguably, no one who was “half-formed” in the way described in the passage above would be capable of actually realizing it and articulating it in this way. Such a person could not be at once defined by his ad hoc grasp of the world and self-conscious about it.

However, critics such as Sarah Brouillette have argued that The White Tiger ’s metafictional critique of the get-rich-quick genre should deflect any concerns about psychological realism. 12 If anything, Adiga’s Balram Halwai is a caricature constructed to make a sociopolitical point about India’s “dark side”: the masses of poor and uneducated who are effectively colonized by the English-speaking elites, who travel around India’s big cities behind dark-tinted windows, invulnerable in their air-conditioned “eggs.” India’s elites, Adiga wants to show, can misbehave with impunity (some of the plot events seem to be inspired by certain very public scandals involving the corruption of the justice system that would have been immediately legible to middle-class Indian readers in the first decade of the 2000s). In short, though Adiga’s protagonist is a servant, this is really a novel about the misbehavior and fragile authority of the ruling class, not about the subaltern.

Alongside Adiga’s novels (his more recent novel, Selection Day [ 2016 ], continues the exploration of class and urban life, with a pair of cricket-playing brothers in a Mumbai slum), a number of other writers have emerged to explore the new urban realism. Uday Prakash, in his Hindi short stories, is extraordinarily attentive to the everyday lives of working-class people often invisible to English-language writers. His suffering protagonist in the short story “Walls of Delhi” ( 2008 ), for instance, notes the city’s rapid gentrification will likely lead to his own disappearance from the scene: “The poor, the sick, the street corner prophets, the lowly, the unexceptional--all gone! They’ve vanished from this new Delhi of wealth and wizardry, never to return, not here, not anywhere else. Not even memories of them will remain.” 13 Another Delhi-based urban realist (in English) is Karan Mahajan, whose novels Family Planning ( 2009 ) and The Association of Small Bombs ( 2016 ), explore social issues and politics in the city. Family Planning is a light and comic coming-of-age novel that works the disjunction between the broken socialist legacies of Indian government bureaucracy (represented by the protagonist’s parents—who with thirteen children seem utterly incapable of “family planning”) and the globalist and cosmopolitan tendencies of the younger generation on the rise. The Association of Small Bombs is more ambitious, exploring the effects of the bombing of a public marketplace on a group of survivors, including a Muslim boy, Mansoor, whose two Hindu friends were killed in the attack, and Deepa and Vikas Khurana, the parents of the boys killed. In a parallel narrative, Mahajan follows the point of view of Shaukat “Shockie” Guru, the Kashmiri militant who made the bomb that killed the Khurana children. Shockie is a young man of modest means who is motivated more by a desire for revenge for past Indian government atrocities against Kashmiris than he is by religious zeal. He is preoccupied with his mother’s failing health as well as the poor pay he receives from his domestic and foreign bosses. Mahajan is not so much interested in exploring the inner psychology of a terrorist; this terrorist, for the most part, refuses introspection with regard to the human costs of his actions. Mahajan interlaces raw and poignant details about Shockie’s everyday life alongside matter-of-fact reportage about his bomb-making, seemingly humanizing a terrorist as a (dangerously) thoughtless participant in a vicious cycle of violence.

Vikram Chandra’s massive doorstop of a book, Sacred Games ( 2006 ) is the product of meticulous research conducted by the author over seven years; it was released in India as well as the United Kingdom and the United States with considerable fanfare and excitement. In the end, the difficulty of Chandra’s prose and the sheer length of the book proved too much for many readers, and Chandra’s novel has seemingly made much less of an impact on the culture than that other monumental work of Indian English fiction, Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy ( 1993 ). Chandra’s book shares with Maximum City and The White Tiger a deep preoccupation with the centrality of violence in everyday life in urban India. Chandra’s setting is the urban Mumbai police department, where a police officer, Sartaj Singh, is reaching his breaking point about both his faltering personal life and his commitment not to accept bribes. He is brought in to investigate the death of an extremely violent and dangerous gangster named Gaitonde with links to a global criminal underworld as well as a terrorist plot involving a nuclear bomb to be set off in central Mumbai. The dominant ethos is a kind of amoral survivalism, which leads Sartaj Singh to make ethical compromises in order to succeed in his investigation: “We are good men who must be bad to keep the worst men in control. Without us, there would be nothing left, there would only be a jungle.” These sentences perfectly encapsulate the ethical framework of the new urban realism; some version of the sentiment they express could quite easily be found in many other books.

While the genre of the New Urban Realism tends to be dominated by male writers, some women novelists also might be seen as writing in this space, especially Samina Ali. But the most important figure to enter into this space is Arundhati Roy, whose 2017 novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , has a definite emphasis on urban life and adult perspectives that were less evident in her earlier The God of Small Things , a novel that had a decided atmosphere of tragic pastorality and a focus on the experiences of young children. Much of Roy’s new novel is set in Delhi, and sensitively explores the life and culture of the Hijra (transgender) community. Another major plot takes the novel into the politics of Kashmiri secessionism and the intensely repressive state response to that movement. But even as much of the middle part of Roy’s novel is set outside of Delhi, its major characters all have a strong connection to Delhi. The emphasis on political violence, the urbanized aesthetics, and the sense that moral judgment in contemporary India is hopelessly vexed—Roy suggests, in an echo of Chandra, that we are all complicit in unspeakable violence—all support The Ministry of Utmost Happiness as an instance of the urban realist aesthetic.

Gender and Religion

The founding principle of secularism—defined, in distinctly Indian terms, as equal treatment toward all religious communities—has been in crisis in the Indian public sphere since the late 1980s. At the center of many of the fraught public debates is the status of women in Indian religious communities. One of the first serious controversies involved Shah Bano, a Muslim woman who had been divorced by her husband under Muslim personal law; the emerging Hindu right took an interest in her case, though secularists saw their involvement as a self-serving gesture designed to put pressure on the minority Muslim community. Subsequently, a prolonged campaign from the Hindu right led to the disruption of the razing of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 , followed soon thereafter by a wave of bombings in Bombay (Mumbai), and subsequent religious riots that left hundreds dead. Another terrible incident of communal violence occurred in Gujarat in 2002 , an event that continues to have ramifications into the present moment. Despite that intense social and political focus, there has not emerged a new body of fiction in the 21st century that deals primarily with issues of religious tolerance and intolerance, though many novels (including several already mentioned) deal with these topics in some way. By contrast, quite a number of late 20th-century texts did centrally take on the topic of religious violence with an emphasis on the status of women; novels like Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan , Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines , and Mukul Kesavan’s Looking Through Glass dealt with gendered communal violence specifically with respect to the Partition of the Indian subcontinent.

That said, since 2000 , a number of novels have been published that bring a particularly feminist sensibility to the secularism debates. In some ways, these novels are all written in the shadow of Arundhati Roy’s groundbreaking The God of Small Things ( 1997 ), which was acutely sensitive to the pervasiveness of caste even across religious boundaries in its account of caste violence in a Keralan Christian community. One notable example of such a book written under the rubric of gender and secular history might be Padma Viswanathan’s The Toss of a Lemon , which explores the lives of a series of Tamil Brahmin women, starting with the protagonist’s child marriage at the age of 10 (in 1896 ), and proceeding forward as she deals with young widowhood as well as various forms of caste bias directed at friends and family.

Samina Ali’s Madras on Rainy Days ( 2004 ) was not reviewed as widely as some other novels, but it is noteworthy for several reasons: it documents the isolation of women in the contemporary Indian Muslim community, while also marking the failure of the state to protect their rights in the face of ongoing problem of discrimination against Muslims. Moreover, Ali explores the flaws in the traditional patriarchal system pertaining to women (including Triple Talaq, arranged marriage, and the overreliance on traditional medicine when modern medicine is much more effective at ensuring women’s health and bodily integrity). Ali’s protagonist is a young woman named Layla, whose family is rooted in the cloistered environs of Old City, Hyderabad, one of India’s oldest and most conservative Muslim enclaves. The city was settled more than five hundred years ago by the Qutb Shahi kings, and remained an independent small kingdom for nearly 200 years, when it was conquered via a siege by the all-powerful Mughal Empire. 14 While the Muslim section of Old City has declined a good deal since its Imperial glory days, it remains a formidable neighborhood—with large mansions and a massive, six-mile wall surrounding the area. Within Old City, it is not uncommon to see women in Burqas or to hear the Azan, or call for prayer, from several different Mosques. It is also common to find the tenets of Islamic Sharia—as sanctified in Indian Civil Law by the Muslim Marriage Act—still very much in force.

Ali definitely aims to use her novel to make a feminist argument about the challenge of finding feminist agency in the context of a strongly patriarchal minority community, but importantly, many of the agents of repression in the novel turn out to be women. Ali’s Layla has been raised partly in the United States before returning to Hyderabad after her divorce. Layla’s mother wants to make sure her daughter’s future isn’t compromised by her own personal situation—so she arranges Layla’s marriage without ever publicly acknowledging that she is in fact divorced herself, as that would ruin the family’s reputation. As is common in many stories about the transmission of conservative patriarchal values, it is the women in Layla’s family—first her mother, then her mother-in-law—who take it upon themselves to present a façade of total respectability to the rest of the community.

Another novel that brings a feminist sensibility together with a focus on the secularism debate is Githa Hariharan’s In Times of Siege ( 2003 ). Hariharan’s protagonist, Professor Shiv Murthy, is a professor of medieval Indian history at a correspondence university in New Delhi. Shiv finds himself in hot water when the Hindu right picks up on a series of lessons he’s written on a 12th-century reform figure named Basava (also spelled Basavanna). Basava was a critic of religious orthodoxies in his day, but also a bit of a religious prophet himself. He is credited with starting a sect, the Veerashaivas (Warriors of Shiva), but he is nevertheless held up by some Indian secularists as an early example of a critic of Brahminical authority and religious dogma in general. Despite Basava’s radical heterodoxy, some contemporary Hindu nationalists have embraced him as one of their own.

The core of Hariharan’s novel is the unlikely transformation of a middle-aged academic from an upper-caste Hindu background into a secularist activist. Shiv’s lectures at the university, Hariharan informs us, are a bit slanted towards the progressive, secularist interpretation, and a loud group of critics (the “Itihas Suraksha Manch,” or “History Protection Platform”) publicly calls for an apology, a revised lesson, and a more “balanced” syllabus. The Chair of the department and the Dean are spooked by the national media attention, and attempt to strongarm Shiv to revise the lesson and sign the apology. While Shiv’s typical response to such a demand would be to instantly capitulate, his attraction to a young female student from another university leads Shiv to a newfound courage and secularist commitment. Meena is a campus radical from a more prestigious university, and her presence in his life completely transforms Shiv’s sense of his role as a historian, leading him to aggressively resist the demands of the History Protection Movement. Hariharan’s take on Basava leans postmodernist: the final truth about this 12th-century figure’s relationship to religion will never be definitively known, but the lack of closure, she suggests, can actually be a lesson for the always polarized, ideologically volatile contemporary moment.

The emergence of a growing LGBTQ literature, especially since 2000 , includes Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman ( 2003 ), which features a woman in a conventional marriage who finds herself involved with another woman, and Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know ( 2015 ), in which a same-sex desire triangle involving a group of married men and women unfolds over forty years. Neither of these novels directly deals with gendered religious violence, though Kapur’s novel does revolve around a married protagonist who gets involved with a Muslim man that leads to a political awakening of sorts. Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Kari also explores a related set of themes, albeit with a superhero twist. Finally, Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness has broken new ground with respect to the depiction of transgendered people in Indian fiction.

Globalizing India, Reinscribing the Past

Engagement with globalization has permeated quite broadly into Indian fiction since the early 1990s, and several of the novels described could very well also be understood with reference to globalization as well ( The White Tiger , for instance, is deeply interested in the topic). But while the theme is now commonplace, the conceptual territory entailed is not necessarily so simple.

Some writers have opted to explore the impact of globalization via an aesthetic of acceleration and cultural simultaneity: everything is changing and all establishments and traditions are being overturned at the root. Some of Salman Rushdie’s work after Midnight’s Children seems relevant to mention here, especially The Satanic Verses , with its embrace of hybridity and displacement. Indeed, in his essay from Imaginary Homelands published soon afterwards, Rushdie described his novel with a credo that very well might be that of the globalization aesthetic more broadly: “ The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” 15 More recent novels in this vein are Hari Kunzru’s Transmission ( 2005 ) and Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled ( 2005 ). These novels, Dasgupta’s especially, are so thoroughly invested in establishing a kind of global chic that they seem almost homeless (the only space present in the frame narrative that binds the various episodic shorts in Tokyo Cancelled together is an international airport).

Against a presentist, deterritorialized globalism, since 2000 a number of Indian novelists have been exploring an aesthetic that melds the theme of globalization with a deep attention to place, and the ways in which history—ancient and modern—continues to exert itself in the contemporary moment. Here, hybridity is occurring, but so are strong forces of reaction, nationalist assertion, and cultural retrenchment. Rather than breathlessly celebrating globalization as an era when everyone and everything comes together, this new set of novels attempts to find a way out of the impasses and disjunctions that continue to keep us apart.

One highly successful example of a novel that perfectly exemplifies the global in the local is Kiran Desai’s Booker Prize–winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss ( 2006 ). Desai’s novel is set in the town of Kalimpong, in the Himalayan mountains (near the border with Bhutan). The primary characters are a group of various displaced Indians from other parts of India who have relocated to this area, many of them with global connections in their pasts, and locals who sometimes view the outsiders with suspicion. Sai, the primary protagonist, has been educated for years in Europe before returning to India to live with her grandfather, Judge Jemubhai Patel. The Judge had his own history abroad as a young man in England, and is now in many ways trapped in a kind of nostalgic Anglophilia that reminds the reader of the ways the legacy of British colonialism continues to impact life in India’s present day. Even the family’s cook has global connections; his son Biju is living in the United States and working in the food service industry in New York, where his prospects are severely limited by his immigration status. Sai’s love interest in the novel, Gyan, is part of the indigenous Gurkha ethnic community which resents the economic and political dominance of Hindi-speaking Indians from the plains in their region. As the various competing constituencies in the plot come together, Desai seems to be making a point that even in an era of globalization local identities and the personal histories that go with them remain paramount. And yet we are all intimately connected, as Sai realizes in a meaningful meditation towards the end of the novel: “Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own mean little happiness and live safely within it” (Kiran Desai, Inheritance of Loss ).

The inscription of the past in stories with a global scope might very well be the signature of one of India’s most accomplished novelists, Amitav Ghosh. It is a method he initiated in a highly influential nonfiction work, In an Antique Land , and then expanded in his novel The Glass Palace . In the 2000s, he has produced some of his most accomplished writing in this vein with The Hungry Tide and the Ibis Trilogy .

The Glass Palace ( 1996 ) is virtually an epic of southeast Asia—it simultaneously tells the story of: the Indian National Army during the Second World War; the advent of modernity in Burma, including especially the role of the rubber and teak trades in British colonialism; and the plight of Indian migrant workers in places such as Malaysia at a time of widespread displacement and general chaos. Each of these parallel subplots is essential to the novel’s major conceptual plot, and the presence of each is the product of considerable research on the part of the novelist. Through juxtaposition, Ghosh suggests a number of compelling ties between Indian Bengal and the rest of Southeast Asia. Overall, in The Glass Palace Ghosh makes a major claim for unifying modern Southeast Asian history—a profoundly integrated Indian Ocean Basin. The Hungry Tide , in contrast, is geographically a bit narrower—the main action of the story is limited to the Sunderban islands in the Bay of Bengal, and perhaps by extension Bengal itself. Ghosh’s novel explores the plight of displaced peoples—here specifically a group of refugees from Bangladesh who found themselves in a confrontation with the Indian state in 1979 . The other conceptual question is how humans share a complex and dangerous ecosystem with animals (here dolphins and tigers).

The environmental theme in The Hungry Tide serves as an important conceptual bridge between the global and local. The Irawaddy dolphins are being studied by Piyali Roy, a marine biologist of Bengali descent who discovers some strange behavioral quirks among dolphins in a tide pool while visiting the islands on a grant. The Bay of Bengal is also one of the only habitats where Bengal tigers continue to live in the wild. They are zealously protected by various international environmental groups (who apply economic pressure on the Indian and Bangladeshi governments to maintain the tiger habitats by military force). But in the name of a global priority—namely, tiger preservation—local human lives are threatened, as the tigers routinely maul and often kill islanders. Though there are the obvious modern devices that might be used to protect the islanders, the state allows local deaths to continue in the interest of a highly sought—even commodified—global environmental reputation. In the Sunderbans, Ghosh argues, human lives are valued lower than those of tigers as global economic forces and international institutions make local suffering invisible.

Alongside the more social and political critique of borders and national identity that permeates The Hungry Tide , the islands themselves are in a flood plain, and their precarious status is a figure for the possible harms that could follow from climate change. In the novel, the land itself is inconstant—subject to sometimes radical alterations as a result of late summer storms. Whole islands are washed away by the cyclones that sweep in with huge tidal surges; thousands of human beings and animals routinely die in these storms, which may get worse as climate change continues to accelerate. Global interests impinge on life in the Sunderbans in ways that are sometimes quite direct (the NGO-driven ban on killing tigers) and sometimes unthinkably vast and abstract.

Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy ( 2009–2015 ) is an ambitious experiment in exploring the connections between the global network of migration and the flow of capital and commodities in a historical context. The implicit argument of the series might well be that the British Empire connected India to an idea of globality in the early 19th century , through seagoing vessels like the eponymous Ibis , a former slave ship now used in Ghosh’s series as a cargo vessel in the opium trade and, in Sea of Poppies ( 2009 ), in the movement of indentured workers from India to other parts of the Indian Ocean basin. Ghosh’s series features an international and multiracial cast of characters, including a biracial American, Zachary Reid; a poor Indian woman from a rural part of Bihar who is attempting to escape an untenable living situation (an opium-addicted husband who drugs her and then allows her to be raped by her brother); a Frenchwoman brought into service as a governess for a wealthy family in Bengal; and a dispossessed Bengali prince, among others.

Globality is also very much in evidence in what might be the defining feature of the series, namely, Ghosh’s use of various slangs, patois, and pidgins amongst his various characters. One version of this is an inventive pidgin spoken amongst the “Lascars” who are taken on board when the Ibis’ s regular (English-speaking) crew die off from illness early on in the story. The Lascars are a group of sailors from all over the Indian Ocean basin and southeast Asia, and they communicate with one another and others on the ship in a pidgin that is part Hindi (“so muchee buk-buk and big-big hookuming”) and partly universal Portuguese ship pidgin (“No sabbi ship-pijjin”), with elements from Chinese and other Asian language thrown into the mix as well. Another patois that appears in the series is the more familiar “Hobson-Jobson” mix of Hindustani and English spoken by the established Anglo-Indian population that, by 1839 , has a quite firm grip on the country it rules. Interestingly, the Anglo-Indians who employ this hybridized mode of speech do so deliberately—choosing it over committing fully to Indian languages. At one point, Zachary Reid is told by the pilot of a river schooner to drop “just a little peppering of nigger-talk mixed with a few girleys. But mind your Oordoo and Hindee doesn’t sound too good: don’t want the world to think you’ve gone native.” In the second and third installments of the series, River of Smoke ( 2011 ) and Flood of Fire ( 2015 ), Ghosh takes his characters to new settings, including the Fanqui-town in Canton (Guangzhou), China, the primary destination for much of the opium being brought into China by the British in the years before the Opium Wars, and Mauritius, where a new hybrid culture and language emerges that is partly influenced by the indigenous community (speaking Kreol) and partly by Hindi, Bengali, and Bhojpuri-speaking laborers from India.

Discussion of the Literature

Many of the best critics of South Asian literature are novelists themselves. The best might well be Salman Rushdie; his Imaginary Homelands laid much of the conceptual groundwork for the scholarship and analysis that has followed. 16 Another helpful novelist-critic who has been exploring the framing of the Indian novel after Rushdie is Amit Chaudhuri; his Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature, and Modernity opens up a way of thinking about Indian literature after jettisoning the pretense of national allegory. 17 A good starting point for the debate about authenticity in Indian literature post- 2000 might be the two essays on The White Tiger , Amitava Kumar’s essay in Boston Review , 18 and Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s “Diary.” 19 Of course, these essays are reworkings of an earlier essay dealing with authenticity by another novelist, Vikram Chandra’s “The Cult of Authenticity.” 20

While by and large the best sources to consult with respect to Indian literature are usually the serious literary reviews ( The New Yorker , New York Review of Books , London Review of Books ), some excellent academic scholarship has appeared in recent years. One starting point might be Mrinalini Chakravarty’s In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary , particularly chapter 3, “Slumdog or White Tiger? The Abjection and Allure of Slums.” 21 Also recommended is Ulka Anjaria’s comprehensive anthology, A History of the Indian Novel in English , though only later chapters of that text deal with the issues covered here in depth (see especially Priya Joshi’s “Chetan Bhagat: Remaking the Novel in India” and Shameem Black’s “Post-Humanitarianism and the Indian Novel in English.”) 22 On the question of secularism and gender, a notable book is Priya Kumar’s Limiting Secularism: The Ethics of Coexistence in Indian Literature and Film . 23 For a general introduction to late 20th-century South Asian literature that is accessible to undergraduates, Paul Brians’ Modern South Asian Literature in English can be quite helpful. 24

Further Reading

• Anjaria, Ulka . A History of the Indian Novel in English . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Brians, Paul . Modern South Asian Literature in English . Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.
• Brouillette, Sarah . Literature and the Creative Economy . Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014.
• Chakravorty, Mrinalini . In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary . New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• Chaudhari, Amit . Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature, and Modernity . New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
• Chandra, Vikram . “The Cult of Authenticity” Boston Review . February 1, 2000.
• Cooppan, Vilashini . Worlds Within: National Narratives and Global Connections in Postcolonial Writing . Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009.
• Dharwadker, Vinay . Cosmpolitan Geographies: New Locations in Literature and Culture . New York: Routledge, 2000.
• Kumar, Amitava , ed. World Bank Literature . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
• Kumar, Priya . Limiting Secularism: The Ethics of Coexistence in Indian Literature and Film . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
• Mishra, Pankaj . Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
• Rushdie, Salman . Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 . New York: Penguin, 1992.
• Sanga, Jaina . South Asian Literature in English: An Encyclopedia . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
• Vadde, Aarthi . Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism Beyond Europe, 1914–2016 . New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
• Varma, Rashmi . The Postcolonial City and Its Subjects . New York: Routledge, 2011.

1. Amit Chaudhari , Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature, and Modernity (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 114–115.

2. Fredric Jameson , “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text 15 (Autumn, 1986): 65–88.

3. Uday Prakash , The Walls of Delhi: Three Novellas , trans. Jason Grunebaum (New Delhi: Seven Stories Press, 2016).

4. Aarti Dhar , “ Despite Big Leap, India’s English Proficiency Is Just Moderate: Survey ,” The Hindu , October 27, 2012.

5. Amitava Kumar , Nobody Does the Right Thing (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 9.

6. Donald Greenlees , “Investment Banker Becomes Best-Selling Author in India,” New York Times , March 14, 2008. Available online .

7. Suneera Tandon , “ Q&A With Chetan Bhagat ,” Quartz India , October 12, 2016.

8. Jason Burke , “ Mills and Boon Answer Call of India’s New Middle Class for English Novels ,” The Guardian , March 3, 2010.

9. Zac Boone , “ Samit Basu Talks Turbulence , Unleash the Fanboy , August 24, 2013.

10. Amitava Kumar , “ Bad News: Authenticity and the South Asian Political Novel ,” Boston Review (November/December 2008).

11. Sanjay Subrahmanyam , “ Diary ,” London Review of Books 30, no. 21 (November 6, 2008).

12. Sarah Brouillette , Literature and the Creative Economy (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014).

13. Prakash, The Walls of Delhi , 2.

14. Toby Howarth , The Twelver Shi’a as a Muslim Minority in India: Pulpit of Tears (London: Routledge, 2005).

15. Salman Rushdie , Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 (New York: Penguin, 1992), 394.

16. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands .

17. Amit Chaudhuri , Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature, and Modernity (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

18. Amitava Kumar , “Bad News: Authenticity and the South Asian Political Novel,” Boston Review (2008).

19. Sanjay Subrahmanyam , “Diary,” London Review of Books (2008).

20. Vikram Chandra , “The Cult of Authenticity,” Boston Review (2000).

21. Mrinalini Chakravarty , In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

22. Ulka Anjaria , A History of the Indian Novel in English (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

23. Priya Kumar , Limiting Secularism: The Ethics of Coexistence in Indian Literature and Film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

24. Paul Brians , Modern South Asian Literature in English (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003).

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