Cracking India


Bapsi Sidhwa - 1988
    Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lenny’s world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the domestic drama serves as a microcosm for a profound political upheaval.

The Girl with the Golden Parasol


Uday Prakash - 2008
    . . .The yellow glowed beautifully in the morning light. There was something different about this particular yellow. This one entered through his eyes, dissolved in his blood, and went straight to his heart.” Uday Prakash’s novel of contemporary India is a tender love story—university student Rahul is swept away by a “sweet fever” of love for Anjali, the enchanting girl with the golden parasol. But Prakash’s tale is set in a world where the 3,000-year-old Hindu caste system still holds sway and social realities doom the chances of a non-Brahmin boy who loves a Brahmin girl. The Girl with the Golden Parasol is the first English translation of Prakash’s work to be published in the United States. His audacious novel captures the profound contradictions of India today, where the forces aligned against change outweigh even the power of love.

The Glass Palace


Amitav Ghosh - 2000
    When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls “a master storyteller.”

Em and The Big Hoom


Jerry Pinto - 2012
    Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital after her failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he could, they tried to be a family.

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories


M.T. Vasudevan Nair - 1959
    This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration.

Lajja: Shame


Taslima Nasrin - 1993
    Despite being part of the country's small Hindu community, that is terrorized at every opportunity by Muslim fundamentalists, they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and relatives have done. Sudhamoy, an atheist, believes with a naive mix of optimism and idealism that his motherland will not let him down... And then, on 6 December 1992, the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India is demolished by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists. The world condemns the incident but its fallout is felt most acutely in Bangladesh, where Muslim mobs begin to seek out and attack the Hindus... The nightmare inevitably arrives at the Duttas' doorstep - and their world begins to fall apart.

In a Forest, a Deer


Ambai - 2000
    Winner of the Hutch Crossword Book Award 2006, this collection is an enduring testimony of the ideology and belief that Ambai's writings affirm-the need to know and be in touch with a stable or 'grounded' self that allows fluidity and change in modern times of travel, dislocation, and exile.

सूरज का सातवाँ घोड़ा


Dharamvir Bharati - 1952
    A short novel, that may also be viewed as a set of connected mini-narratives, it can also be considered as one of the foremost instances of metafiction in twentieth century Hindi literature. This book talks about the encounter of narrator with 3 different women during his teenage, youth & adulthood.

बकर पुराण


Ajeet Bharti - 2016
    The pages of this book contain stories of every bachelor who fell in love, did stupid things and discussed India's foreign policy at the neighbourhood tea stall.'Bakar Puran' is the past, present and the future of those bachelors which will always be the same. The language and style has the realism of a bachelor pad. Here, there is no garb of elitism in expression. Whatever it is, it just is.

Dozakhnama


Rabisankar Bal - 2010
    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.’ Rabisankar Bal’s audacious novel, told by reflections in a mirror and forged in the fires of hell, is both an oral tale and a shield against oblivion. An echo of distant screams. Inscribed by the devil’s quill, Dozakhnama is an outstanding performance of subterranean memory.

House of Cards


Sudha Murty - 2013
    She meets Sanjay, an impoverished doctor, and they fall in love and decide to marry and settle in Bangalore. Mridula starts to notice the selfish and materialistic world around her. In the meanwhile, Sanjay decides to leave his current job for a private practice. The job pays him well and with more money comes the desire for even more. This leads to corrupt practices and problems between the couple. Mridula eventually decides that she needs to leave her husband and go out on her own.

The Space Between Us


Thrity Umrigar - 2006
    Set in modern-day India, it is the story of two compelling and achingly real women: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, who has worked in the Dubash household for more than twenty years.

Such a Long Journey


Rohinton Mistry - 1991
    A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Silence! The Court is in Session


Vijay Tendulkar - 1968
    In some ways typical, in others uncharacteristic, this play was written for a Rangayan performance in 1968. Drafted mere days before its staging, it has since been broadcast by the BBC in English and made into a film by Satyadev Dubey. This edition of the play, titled Silence! The Court is in Session and translated by Priya Adarkar, also features an introduction by Kumud Mehta.

A Suitable Boy


Vikram Seth - 1993
    Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find—through love or through exacting maternal appraisal—a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.