Book picks similar to
The Legend of Amrapali by Anurag Anand


historical-fiction
indian-authors
indian
indian-writing

Me "N" Her - A Strange Feeling


Rikky Bhartia - 2013
    Life ... Separation? Love implies three words smiles, tears, and endings. Endings are not always happy ... yet they leave a mark in our lives in some way.Me N Her A Strange Feeling is an involving and intriguing love story of two young people, of strangers, whose paths cross and lead to strange feelings, later discovered as love. Harsh is passionate and ambitious, but forgets his ambition when he meets Janvi. Janvi ... loves to dream, but is lost in life ... reasons unknown.At the height of their celebration ... a strange twist in life happens, that changes everything forever ... Love is what brings them close ... and love is what ... separates them. Does love change with time? Is it possible to fall in love repeatedly with the same person? Harsh and Janvi give you every answer ... their love story will remind you of your first love ... its unexpected ending will bring tears and smiles.

The Pregnant King


Devdutt Pattanaik - 2008
    Among the many characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, the world's greatest epic and the oldest, sometimes other stories unravelled from it, such as Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman.

The Great War of Hind (The Legend of Ramm #1)


Vaibhav Anand - 2014
    All that there was then, was earth… There are raconteurs and mischief-mongers in our ranks and I have no doubt they shall pervert the truth with their self-serving versions. The events of history – this history of our land – shall thus inevitably have many versions, doubtless. But, I was there with General Ramm, I fought by his side…”-Sanjaay, official chronicler of General RammAround 12000 B.C., Hindustan (or Hind) as we know it today, comprised five kingdoms of man, sandwiched between Parbat – the kingdom of the Gods in the north, and Lunka – the kingdom of the demons in the south. The ‘Legend of Ramm’ unravels the story of the military general called Ramm in the kingdom of Ayodh and how his actions came to define our world as we know it today.

Four Miles To Freedom: Escape From A Pakistani POW Camp


Faith Johnston - 2013
    On 13 August 1972 Parulkar, along with Malvinder Singh Grewal and Harish Sinhji escaped from a POW camp in Rawalpindi. Four Miles To Freedom is their story.Based on interviews with eight Indian fighter pilots who helped prepare the escape and two who escaped, as well as research into other sources, Four Miles is also the moving, sometimes amusing, account of how twelve fighter pilots from different ranks and backgrounds coped with deprivation, forced intimacy, and the pervasive uncertainty of a year in captivity, and how they came together to support Parulkar's courageous escape.

The Grandmother's Tale


R.K. Narayan - 1992
    

Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother


Saeed Akhtar Mirza - 2008
    Combative and lyrical, moving and relentlessly inquiring, "Ammi" offers a way of seeing our history and our future that is impossible to ignore.

Yoddha: The Dynasty of Samudragupta


Rajat Pillai - 2018
    The Gupta dynasty is stepping into its golden ageBut the past holds many dark secrets... After long and bloody wars, Samrat Samudragupta sits on the pinnacle of an empire. yet, close to his throne are hearts filled with revenge, scheming to bring him down.Into this gathering storm arrives Chandragupta, the king’s long-lost son. As he settles into his new life devastating family secrets surface, old wounds are reopened and Chandra can no longer trust anyone – least of all those closest to him. Bizarre and sinister incidents abound as palace conspiracies unravel plunging Rajgriha into a pit of chaos. Will the son pay for the sins of his father?Yoddha: The Dynasty of Samudragupta unfolds the murky loves and lies of one of the most illustrious clans in history.

Happy Birthday!


Meghna Pant - 2013
    These finely nuanced stories provide a rare glimpse into the complex and mysterious inner lives of human beings.Happy Birthday was longlisted for the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award 2014. It has also been voted the TOP title on Flipkart’s editors picks for this month: http://www.flipkart.com/books/~editor...A dedicated friend undertakes one last labour of love for a childless woman. Nadia - married into money - finds herself facing uncomfortable truths about her comfortably numb marriage. A Mumbai slum-girl dreams of speaking words valuable enough to be translated into English. An American tourist seeking nirvana sets off a sudden chain of events when his bag is stolen, and destiny plays her hand. A retired civil servant of modest means struggles to support his snooty foreign-returned daughter.Meghna Pant’s knife - sharp stories are compelling, emotionally intelligent and provide a rare glimpse into the strange workings of the human heart. They evade neat categorization andare the perfect read for all curious spirits."These are stories with a large heart and a keen eye, deeply aware of the complex, sometimes uncomfortable realities of India, its many layers. Meghna Pant knows how to create characters that will surprise and move you." – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni "Deft, merciless and expertly-tuned parables for the new Indian century."– Jeet Thayil"Meghna Pant pierces one’s heart with the reality and depth of her stories, wrapping up her tales with unanticipated yet undeniable flourish. Exceptionally thought-provoking narratives that manage to be provocative and inspirational in the very same breath."– Ashwin Sanghi"These intimate stories juxtapose a range and register of aerial and emotional perspectives, with craft, delicacy and an intensely human sensibility."– Namita Gokhale

Another Man's Wife and Other Stories


Manjul Bajaj - 2012
    NINE NUANCED STORIES THAT EXPLORE THE THEMES OF DESIRE, INTIMACY AND LOVE...A contractor at a dam site develops so obsessive a desire for a tribal woman that he brings home and holds captive another man's wife; a kathak dancer trapped in a marriage of convenience redefines notions of fidelity; an accidental step into an occupied bathroom changes a Delhi servant boy's life forever; a young married couple beleaguered by infertility desperately tries to reignite the romance and passion of their honeymoon on a houseboat in Kashmir...Set across India, each of the stories in this collection unerringly locates the defiant undercurrent of individual expression in people shackled by societal norms.

Karna's Wife: The Outcast's Queen


Kavita Kané - 2013
    An accomplished Kshatriya princess who falls in love with and dares to choose the sutaputra over Arjun, Uruvi must come to terms with the social implications of her marriage and learn to use her love and intelligence to be accepted by Karna and his family. Though she becomes his mainstay, counselling and guiding him, his blind allegiance to Duryodhana is beyond her power to change. The story of Uruvi and Karna unfolds against the backdrop of the struggle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. As events build up leading to the great war of the Mahabharata, Uruvi is a witness to the twists and turns of Karna's fate; and how it is inextricably linked to divine design. A splendid saga from the pages of the Mahabharata, Karna's Wife: The Outcast s Queen brings its characters alive in all their majesty.

No Onions Nor Garlic


Srividya Natarajan - 2006
    Like libertines. To their hormonal despair, when Professor Ram stages his remake of A Midsummer Night's Dream at their college fest, he casts these four as fairies. The farce that follows gradually takes over the lives of the rest of the characters in this achingly funny novel about the pratfalls that accompany caste pride. On and off the campus of Chennai University, you will encounter onion-and-garlic-free TamBrahms who rewrite Shakespeare to uphold the Hindu order, smug NRIs who call the shots in matrimonials, visiting Canadians who are aghast at the plight of Dalits (pronounced 'daylights') and, at the apex of the whole tumbling structure, a bibulous builder who invokes the gods even as he defrauds his clients. Tailing the characters around this plot is an unseen but all-seeing spectator. You may never guess who that is, but will laugh all the way to the answer.

Birbal the Genius


Dev Nadkarni
    While his courtiers were jealous of Birbal, the emperor was quick to notice his agile mind. While the two men loathed hypocrisy and deceit; they also relished a good joke.

Delhi Anti-Hindu Riots 2020, The Macabre Dance of Violence Since December 2019: An OpIndia Report


Nupur J. Sharma - 2020
    However, as is perhaps not very politically correct to point out, Islam as a religion calls Muslims to be a part of Ummah, which is to say, that all Muslims belong to the same theological ‘country’ regardless of political borders.That coupled with the intrinsic need of the Left to forever consider the Muslims as the victims, even under imaginary circumstances led to massive riots and violence in India. The perceived wrong here was that CAA left Muslims out, however, the truth was the CAA had nothing to do with Indians at all, let alone Indian Muslims.Another excuse for the rampant violence was that the proposed NRC would snatch away the citizenship of Muslims. That too, was a shameless canard. The NRC, when implemented and drafted, would be aimed to identify and deport Illegal Immigrants, and not Indian Citizens. No country in the world wantonly accepts indiscriminate influx of illegals, but the Left and Islamist nexus burnt the country because that is exactly what it expected of India.While many people wish to look at the Delhi Riots 2020 in isolation, the events that started right from the 1st December 2019 proves otherwise. It proves that the violence was a concerted effort to push Anarchy and Chaos in India. It proves that the Delhi Riots was no anti-Muslim pogrom, it was indeed, a well-oiled plan to tame ‘kafirs’.

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.”

False Allies: India's Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma


Manu S. Pillai - 2021
    Bejewelled parasites, they cared more, we are told, for elephants and palaces than for schools and public works. The British cheerfully circulated the idea that brown royalty needed ‘enlightened’ white hands to guide it, and by the twentieth century many Indians too bought into the stereotype, viewing princely India as packed with imperial stooges. Indeed, even today the princes are either remembered with frothy nostalgia or dismissed as greedy fools, with no role in the making of contemporary India. In this brilliantly researched book, Manu S. Pillai disputes this view. Tracking the travels of the iconic painter Ravi Varma through five princely states – from the 1860s to the early 1900s – he uncovers a picture far removed from the clichés in which the princes are trapped. The world we discover is not of dancing girls, but of sedition, legal battles, the defiance of imperial dictates, and resistance. We meet maharajahs obsessed with industrialization, and rulers who funded nationalists, these men anything but pushovers for the Raj to manipulate. Outward deference aside, the princes, Pillai shows, forever tested the Raj – from denying white officials the right to wear shoes in durbars to trying to surpass British administrative standards. Good governance became a spectacularly subversive act, by which maharajahs and the ‘native statesmen’ assisting them refuted claims that Indians could not rule themselves. For decades this made the princes heroes in the eyes of nationalists and anti-colonial thinkers – a facet of history we have forgotten and ignored. By refocusing attention on princely India, False Allies takes us on an unforgettable journey and reminds us that the maharajahs were serious political actors – essential to knowing modern India.