India: novels fiction
Explore the best Indian fiction novels with our curated list of top books. Discover captivating stories, rich cultural tales, and must-read fiction from India's finest authors.
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The Hungry Tide
by Amitav Ghosh
The arrival of marine biologist, Piya Roy, and urbane businessman, Kanai Dutt, upsets the balance in the small community in the Sundarbans.
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The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, this is the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel who try to craft a childhood for themselves amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory.
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Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
The story of Saleem Sinal, born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent. Saleem's life parallels the history of his nation.
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The House of Kanooru
by Kuvempu
From Kannada's first Jnanpith award winner, a landmark of modern fiction that documents a vanishing world. When Hoovayya and Ramayya return from their studies in the city to their ancestral home, much has changed, throwing the even tenor of village life out of joint. The entry of Subbamma, the young wife of much-married Chandrayya Gowda into the House of Kanooru, sets in motion an irrevocable chain of events which signify the coming of age of a resolutely traditional society. Acutely conscious of the burden of their education amidst the torpor of manorial life, the brothers are forced to witness the descent into cruelty of Chandrayya Gowda, who breaks old familial ties, and demands an impossible fealty. The petty meanness of the Gowda s old age and the idealistic vitality of youth confront each other when Hoovayya and Ramayya both fall in love with Seethe, their childhood playmate, with disastrous consequences for the manor house of Kanooru. The epic conflicts of a decaying feudal order are seen through a multiplicity of characters, and voices that refuse to be silenced. The first stirrings of change in the lives of the Belas, the highland plantation workers and their labouring women, the proud Shudra landowners, the secretive and predatory Agrahara of the Brahmins, are dramatized by a humane eye sensitive to the slightest nuance. The House of Kanooru is ultimately a moving tribute by one of Kannada s greatest writers to the spirit of modernity. Translated from the Kannada by B.C. Ramachandra Sharma and Padma Ramachandra Sharma.
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A Suitable Boy
by Vikram Seth
Tells the story of four large extended families in 1950s India against the political and religious upheavals of the time.
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The Point of Return
by Siddhartha Deb
Set in the remote northeastern hills of India, the story revolves around the father-son relationship of a willful curious boy, Babu, and Doctor Dam, an enigmatic product of British colonial rule and Nehruvian nationalism. Told in reverse chronological order, the novel examines an India where the ideals that brought freedom from colonial rule are beginning to crack under the pressure of new rebellions and conflicts. For Dr. Dam and Babu this has meant living as strangers in the same home, puzzled and resentful, tied only by blood. As the father grows weary and old and the son tries to understand him, clashes between ethnic groups in their small town show them to be strangers to their country as well. Before long Babu finds himself embarking on a great journey, an odyssey through the memories of his father, his family, and his nation. The Point of Return poignantly explores the precarious balance of familial relationships built around secrets and the intrusions of political conflicts outside the control of individuals. From start to finish it is a powerful, moving, and unforgettable story.
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In Times of Siege
by Githa Hariharan
At 52, Shiv Murthy is a New Delhi professor of history. He leads a mild, unremarkable life until, while his wife is away, things spin out of control. First, the young and passionate daughter of an old friend breaks her leg and moves in with him. Even as he struggles to care for Meena and ignore his increasing attraction to her, a group of religious extremists challenges one of his lessons on medieval India. His instinct is to apologize, but the voice inside his head keeps asking: “Do you imagine an ordinary man cannot be a hero?” The decision he makes will prompt readers to ask themselves the same question.
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Bombay Time
by Thrity Umrigar
During the wedding of one of their neighbors, the longtime residents of a middle-class apartment building in Bombay look back on their lives, in a study that follows Adi Patel's descent into alcoholism, the romantic betrayal of Soli Contractor, the reclusive world of widow Tehmi Engineer, gossipy Dosamai, and the struggle of disillusioned businessman Rusi Bilimoria to make sense of his life. A first novel. Reprint.
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Song of the Cuckoo Bird
by Amulya Malladi
From the author of "Serving Crazy with Curry" comes an ambitious, moving tale of one woman's search for a meaningful life in post-independence India.
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Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
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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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Sister of My Heart
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
From the award-winning author of Mistress of Spices, the bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart. Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite those differences, since the day on which the two girls were born, the same day their fathers died--mysteriously and violently--Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates as well as their hearts were merged. But, when Sudha learns a dark family secret, that connection is shattered. For the first time in their lives, the girls know what it is to feel suspicion and distrust. Urged into arranged marriages, Sudha and Anju's lives take opposite turns. Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household. Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. When tragedy strikes each of them, however, they discover that despite distance and marriage, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and exotic, seducing readers from the first page with the lush prose we have come to expect from Divakaruni. Sister of My Heart is a novel destined to become as widely beloved as it is acclaimed.
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The Hero's Walk
by Anita Rau Badami
In a small, dusty town in India, Sripathi Rao struggles as a copywriter to keep his family afloat in their crumbling ancestral home. But his mother berates him for not becoming a lawyer, his son prefers social protest to work, his unmarried sister seethes with repressed desire, and his wife, though subservient, blames him for refusing to communicate with their daughter Maya, who defied tradition, rejecting her proper Brahmin fiancé for a Caucasian husband. Then a phone call brings tragedy: Maya and her husband have been killed in an accident leaving Sripathi to be their daughter’s guardian. Sripathi reluctantly travels to Vancouver to bring the child back to India. Nandana has not spoken a word since her parents’ death. Terrified, she resists her distant grandfather. Filled with guilt about his daughter but unable to express his feelings, Sripathi finds everything in his life falling apart. But with Nandana’s arrival, his world slowly, unexpectedly, finds new hope. The Hero’s Walk is a remarkably intimate novel that fills the senses with the unique textures of India. With humor and keen insight, Anita Rau Badami draws us into her story of the graceful heroism of the ordinary.
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Holder of the World
by Bharati Mukherjee
“An amazing literary feat and a masterpiece of storytelling. Once again, Bharati Mukherjee prove she is one of our foremost writers, with the literary muscles to weave both the future and the past into a tale that is singularly intelligent and provocative.”—Amy Tan This is the remarkable story of Hannah Easton, a unique woman born in the American colonies in 1670, “a person undreamed of in Puritan society.” Inquisitive, vital and awake to her own possibilities, Hannah travels to Mughal, India, with her husband, and English trader. There, she sets her own course, “translating" herself into the Salem Bibi, the white lover of a Hindu raja. It is also the story of Beigh Masters, born in New England in the mid-twentieth century, an “asset hunter” who stumbles on the scattered record of her distant relative's life while tracking a legendary diamond. As Beigh pieces together details of Hannah's journeys, she finds herself drawn into the most intimate and spellbinding fabric of that remote life, confirming her belief that with “sufficient passion and intelligence, we can decontrsuct the barriers of time and geography....”