Book picks similar to
Vanity Bagh by Anees Salim
india
fiction
indian
south-asia
The Walls of Delhi: Three Stories
Uday Prakash - 2012
One of India’s most original and audacious writers, Uday Prakash, weaves three tales of living and surviving in today’s globalized India. In his stories, Prakash portrays realities about caste and class with an authenticity absent in most English-language fiction about South Asia. Sharply political but free of heavy handedness.
The Quilt & Other Stories
Ismat Chughtai - 1994
The narrator of this story, a precocious nine-year old child, is sent to visit an aunt. This aunt, ignored by a husband whose only interest seems to lie in entertaining slim-waisted young boys, suffers from a relentless bodily itch, an itch, her niece discovers, no doctor can cure and only her maidservant can relieve. Frank and often wickedly comic, Chughtai's stories were the imaginative core of her life's work, drawn from memories of the sprawling Muslim household of her childhood. With her mastery of the spoken language, economy of form, and her fine eye for the details of the intricate and hidden world of women's experience, Chughtai captured the evolving conflicts of Muslim India. Her exploration of the myriad and subtle tyrannies of middle-class gentility, and, equally, of those unexpected moments of sexual liberation and spirit, is unrivalled in contemporary Urdu literature.
Moth Smoke
Mohsin Hamid - 2000
Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the wife of his childhood friend and rival, Ozi—the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player even as corruption drains its political will.Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a contemporary Pakistan as far more vivid and disturbing than the exoticized images of South Asia familiar to most of the West. This debut novel establishes Mohsin Hamid as a writer of substance and imagination.
Secret Daughter
Shilpi Somaya Gowda - 2010
It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again.Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.Compulsively readable and deeply touching, SECRET DAUGHTER is a story of the unforeseen ways in which our choices and families affect our lives, and the indelible power of love in all its many forms.
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.
Blue-Skinned Gods
S.J. Sindu - 2021
His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pass them, Kalki begins to question his divinity.Over the next decade, his family unravels, and every relationship he relied on—father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin—starts falling apart. Traveling from India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and spans continents and faiths, in an expansive and heartfelt look at the need for belief in our globally interconnected world.
The Swastika Killer
Mahendra Jakhar - 2017
A MANIC JEW. OR A NEO-NAZI...2006, GERMANY, FIFA WORLD CUP.In Berlin, a killer begins targeting the most dangerous criminals and brands his victims with the symbol of the swastika. The day of each murder coincides mystically with the navagrahas, the days sacred to the nine planetary gods in Hindu mythology. And the dates correspond to hidden horrors of the historical past.Only one man can decipher and look beyond symbols — the unassuming Bala, the sharpest sleuth in the Indian Intelligence Bureau.The chase of a lifetime begins!7/11, MUMBAI EXPLODESThree friends who were born and grew up in the city's brothels, thrown apart by riots, are brought together by the swastika.The killer takes them into the streets of Mumbai, to the den of underworld kings, inside prison complexes, terrorist cells and the snake pit called Bollywood.They will need more than friendship, love, and luck to survive.Is the swastika killer a self-proclaimed vigilante, out to end evil?To find out, and put an end to the killings, Bala will have to go to the beginning. The past that lies hidden in the streets of Old Delhi.KILLING FIELDSThe killer moves through Afghanistan and Pakistan to target the world’s most guarded man. It will change the course of our history.Friendship will be tested with blood and death.Can Bala stop the killer?Can the blood-thirsty navagrahas be pacified?
Curfewed Night
Basharat Peer - 2009
The issue of Kashmir still is a crucial issue discussed across forums in the global arena and is one of the major hindrances in improving relationship with India’s neighbour and kin of one time. Much has been written about Kashmir and the separatist movement in Kashmir. But the beautifully scripted account of the brutality with which the separatist movement is carried on till date has no precedence. The book, Curfewed Nights, gives an honest, crude, and truthful account of what goes on in the paradise of India which is under the spell of the separatist movement.The author of the book, Basharat Peer, being a Kashmiri himself has related to each and every detail provided in the book from the first hand experiences gathered by him. Since independence of India, many Kashmiri youths have been mesmerised by the terrorism to the extent that they want to join the terrorist organisations even without thinking about their families or themselves. They have illusioned godfathers in the leaders of such terrorist outfits. In fact, the author was sent out of Kashmir by his family, just to keep him away from these painful romances with the militants.The book, Curfewed Night, has a lot of heart-rending accounts of how a mother watches her son who is forced to hold an exploding bomb or how a poet discovers his religion when his entire family is killed or how the politicians are tortured inside the refurbished torture chambers or how villages have been rigged with landmines which kills innocent civilians, and how temples have converted into army bunkers while ancient Sufi shrines have been decapitated in bomb blasts.
My Father’s Garden
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar - 2018
At college, he discovers an all-consuming passion for Samir, a junior, who possesses his body, mind and heart. Yet, on their last morning together, when he asks Samir to kiss him goodbye, his lover tells him, ‘A kiss is only for someone special.’In ‘Friend’, the young doctor, escaping heartbreak, finds relief in Pakur where he strikes up an unusual friendship with Bada Babu, the head clerk of the hospital where he is posted. In Bada Babu’s house, they indulge a shared love for drink, delicious food and convivial company. But when government bulldozers arrive to tear down the neighbourhood, and Bada Babu’s house, the young doctor uncovers a sordid tale of apathy and exploitation—and a side to his new friend that leaves him disillusioned.And in ‘Father’, unable, ultimately, to flee the pain, the young doctor takes refuge in his parents’ home in Ghatsila. As he heals, he reflects on his father—once a vital man who had phenomenal success at work and in Adivasi politics, then an equally precipitous downfall—and wonders if his obsessive gardening has anything to do with the choices his son has made.Written with deep empathy and searing emotional intensity, and in the clear, unaffected prose that is the hallmark of Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s style, My Father’s Garden marks a major talent of Indian fiction writing at the top of his form.
Prince of Ayodhya
Ashok K. Banker - 2003
Now, with breathtaking imagination and brilliant storytelling, Ashok K. Banker has recreated this epic tale for modern readers everywhereIn this first book of the Ramayana, it is predicted Ayodhya, legendary capital of warriors and seers, will soon be a wasteland of ashes and blood. Only Rama, Prince of Ayodhya, can hope to prevent the onslaught of darkness. Is Rama’s courage enough in the final battle to halt the demons’ invasion and save Ayodhya?
A Matter of Time
Shashi Deshpande - 1999
His wife, Sumi, returns with their three daughters to the shelter of the Big House where her parents, Kalyani and Shripati, live in oppressive silence: they have not spoken to each other in thirty-five years. As the mystery of this long silence is unraveled, a horrifying story of suffering and loss is laid bare, a story that seems to be repeating itself in Sumi's life.Set in present day Karnataka, A Matter of Time explores the intricate relationships within an extended family encompassing three generations. Images from Hindu religion, myth, and local history twine delicately with images of contemporary India as this family faces and accepts the changes that have suddenly become part of their lives. As their secrets and strengths are revealed, so are the complications of family and culture. This multigenerational story, told in the individual voices of the characters, catches each in turn in the cycles of love, loss, strength, and renewal that become an essential part of their identities.
If God Was a Banker
Ravi Subramanian - 2007
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. Swami's ideal and ethics keeps him behind Sundeep in terms of performance at the New York International Bank where they both work. Sundeep's rapid rise up the corporate ladder and his popularity with colleagues disguises his real motives and cunning mind. The story also has a main character, who is a friend and counsellor to both of them and he has his own philosophy which is based on his experience and is genuine. He always taught what he deemed right. Inspite of all the facts, the temptation of untold riches was too strong for Sundeep and he continued on his quest for more ill-gotten financial gain. All through the novel, the backdrop is the corporate bank environment, which is so polluted that the characters are portrayed as people who are ready to deviate from the righteous path at the drop of a hat. Women throw themselves at their bosses to advance their position. If God Was A Banker was published in 2007 and it won the Indiaplaza Golden Quill Book Award. The book has sold more than 260,000 books and has been a national bestseller.
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories
Vandana Singh - 2018
In “Requiem”, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past.Singh's work dives into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within, and she unblinkingly explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.Contents:- With Fate Conspire (2013)- A Handful of Rice (2012)- Peripeteia (2013)- Lifepod (2007)- Oblivion: A Journey (2008)- Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra (2010)- Are You Sannata3159? (2010)- Indra's Web (2011)- Ruminations in an Alien Tongue (2012)- Sailing the Antarsa (2013)- Cry of the Kharchal (2013)- Wake-Rider (2014)- Ambiguity Machines: An Examination (2015)- Requiem (2018)
A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - 2011
Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes.In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred from a decades-old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. Isolated and battling blame and guilt, the couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants. With the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion.The story “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose entire life is her work until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family for better or worse.Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” —The New York Times.
The Tree with a Thousand Apples
Sanchit Gupta - 2016
While Deewan is forced to flee from his home, Safeena’s mother becomes ‘collateral damage’ and Bilal has to embrace a wretched life of poverty and fear. The place they called paradise becomes a battleground and their friendship struggles when fate forces them to choose sides against their will. Twenty years later destiny brings them to a crossroads again, when they no longer know what is right and what is wrong. While both compassion and injustice have the power to transform lives, will the three friends now choose to become sinful criminals or pacifist saints?The Tree with a Thousand Apples is a universal story of cultures, belongingness, revenge and atonement. The stylized layered format, fast-paced narration and suspenseful storytelling makes for a powerful, gripping read.