Recommendations: Essential Indian Reading.

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In no particular order, here are the Indian books we've (the sister and I) loved over the years.


  1. The Interpreter of Maladies- Jhumpa Lahiri (one of my favourite books of all times.) 
  2. The Namesake- Jhumpa Lahiri 
  3. The Shadow Lines- Amitav Ghosh (A great novel to start with if you haven't read any Amitav Ghosh before.) 
  4. The Glass Palace- Amitav Ghosh
  5. The Hungry Tide-        "
  6. Sea of Poppies-           "
  7. River of Smoke-           " 
  8. Midnights Children- Salman Rushdie 
  9. Love and Longing in Bombay- Vikram Chandra 
  10. Red Earth and Pouring Rain-         " 
  11. Riot- Shashi Tharoor 
  12. The Great Indian Novel- Shashi Tharoor 
  13. Arranged Marriage- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 
  14. Sister of my Heart- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni  
  15. The Adventures of Feluda Vol. I and II- Satyajit Ray 
  16. Indigo- Satyajit Ray 
  17. The Inscrutable Ameircans- Anurag Mathur 
  18. Ladies Coupe- Anita Nair 
  19. Difficult Daughters- Manju Kapur 
  20. The Zoya Factor- Anuja Chauhan (this author writes the best Indian chick-lit) 
  21. Battle for Bittora-        "
  22. A Suitable Boy- Vikram Seth 
  23. Two Lives-              " 
  24. Lifting the Veil- Ismat Chungtai (or any other short story collection by Chungtai.) 
  25. Charulata/ Nashtanihr- Rabindranath Tagore (the movie adaptation by Satyajit Ray is also brilliant.) 
  26. Parineeta- Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (it's lovely and was my Grandmother's favourite story.) 
  27. Srikanta-              " 
  28. English August- Upamanyu Chatterjee 
  29. Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozshah Baug- Rohinton Mistry 
  30. White Mughals- William Dalrymple
  31. The Twentieth Wife- Indu Sundaresan
  32. The Girl in the Garden- Kamala Nair 
  33. The Lost Flamingos of Bombay- Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi
This is pretty much all I can think of now...if I think of more books I'll add to the list. 

Happy Independence Day fellow Indians. Tell me, which are some of your favourite Indian books? 

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