Books on India
Explore the best books on India – from history and culture to travel and fiction. Discover must-read titles that capture the essence of India's rich heritage and diversity.
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The Death of Vishnu
by Manil Suri
Suffused with Hindu mythology, this bestselling story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the soul's progress through the various stages of existence.
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Heat and Dust
by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The Booker Prize–winning novel—intertwining the narratives of two women, past and present, and their relationships to India—from the novelist, short story writer, and two–time Academy Award–winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Partly set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant, and unsure of the child's paternity, she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community, breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death.
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The Raj Quartet, Volume 1
by Paul Scott
In August of 1942, a young Englishwoman is raped in an Indian garden, and her fate and that of an elderly English school teacher entwine.
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Arranged Marriage
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Although Chitra Divakaruni's poetry has won praise and awards for many years, it is her "luminous, exquisitely crafted prose" (Ms.) that is quickly making her one of the brightest rising stars in the changing face of American literature. Arranged Marriage, her first collection of stories, spent five weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list and garnered critical acclaim that would have been extraordinary for even a more established author. For the young girls and women brought to life in these stories, the possibility of change, of starting anew, is both as terrifying and filled with promise as the ocean that separates them from their homes in India. From the story of a young bride whose fairy-tale vision of California is shattered when her husband is murdered and she must face the future on her own, to a proud middle-aged divorced woman determined to succeed in San Francisco, Divakaruni's award-winning poetry fuses here with prose for the first time to create eleven devastating portraits of women on the verge of an unforgettable transformation.
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Difficult Daughters
by Manju Kapur
The reformist fervour Virmati's family lives by is shattered when she falls in love with a married professor. Ironically, she only met him because earlier generations had fought to unlock the echelons of higher education for the women of the Punjab.
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A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
For use in schools and libraries only. In mid-1970s India, after a "state of internal emergency" is declared, four diverse people--a widowed seamstress, a student, and a man and his nephew who have fled their village--find their lives inextricably intertwined.
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The City of Joy
by Dominique Lapierre
Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.
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Freedom at Midnight
by Larry Collins
A reconstruction of events at the time of the eclipse of the fabled British Raj. The authors also examine the roles enacted by Gandhi, Lord Mountbatten, Nehru and Jinnah, among others in the violent transformation into the new India and Pakistan.
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The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
Includes a reading group guide, a conversation with the author, and an excerpt from "Between the assassinations."