1. Malgudi Day by RK Narayan .
Often touted as India's answer to Chekov ,RK Narayan was one of the early wave of Indian writers who first introduced the world to the genre of Indian writing in English,this 1943 book is a collection of 32 short stories focusing on the pre-independence fictional South Indian town of Malgudi and it vividly captures the sights and sounds of everyday life in India .Known for his gripping cliff-hanger endings,Narayan crowds his pages with characters who range from affable and endearing to the downright despicable .
2.A Suitable boy
With all the husband-hunting ,class divides and family intrigue ,Seth's masterpiece could be Jane Austen novel-if it weren't set in 1950's India ,that is. Lata Mehra's mother is on a quest to find her daughter the perfect match ,but Lata has ideas of her own regarding marriage and love, and so do her extended entourage of relative. Set against the socio-political upheaval of newly independent India -spanning from partition to the first general elections and touching on themes of communal strife and struggle for gender equality, Seth captures a sweeping visually rich ,satirical snapshot of the subcontinent and its inhabitants finding their feet .
3. The Inheritance of loss
Literature often glorifies multiculturalism - Desai 2006 second novel .however ,decidedly doesn't. It's the 1980's .Biju ,an Indian living illegally in the US ,spends his days working in grimy kitchens of nondescript New York restaurants, dodging the immigration and Naturalization Service and living in squalid accommodation.Meanwhile ,in a north-eastern India shadowed by political unrest ,Cambridge -educated retired judge Kemubhai Patel (whose cook is biju's father ) lives with his teenage granddaughter Sai and his nostalgic Anglophilia results in a deep aversion to his own culture.
4.The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
the Indian american experience has turned out to be primary theme throughout all the Pulitzer-prize -winning Lahiri's work and nowhere does she capture it better than in her debut novel The Namesake .Capturing the immigrant experience in all its awkwardness and wonder , she poignantly portrays the sense of displacement ,awe and overwhelming nostalgia that affects all those trying to form a life outside of everything they are accustomed to. The narrative traces Indian couple Ashima and ashoke Ganguly's journey to the us in search of a better life as they adjust to a new culture and raise their first generation .American children.children. Thier son Gogol,is torn between his parents 's heritage and the lifestyle he was born into ,his unusual name aggravating hid identity crisis.
5. The God of small thing by Arundhati Roy
my review on this book The God of small things
6. The Shadow Linesby Amitab ghosh
Amoving saga about the bonds of family and the poewer of imagination ,memory and love ,its an timeless as any classic can be . Told from the point of view of the unnamed narrator ,the intertwined lives of three generations of of two families are explored ,as the narrative flits between time and place ,from India to Bangladesh to England bet 1939 to 1964.
7. Q&a by Swarup
Swarup 2006 debut novel has all the ingredients for a perfect Bollywood (or in case Hollywood) potboiler drama ,action ,romance bengeance ,suspense and a winning amount of rs 1 million .Its no surprise then that Danny Boyle decided make Q&A into a film; the Oscar winning slumdog millionaire ,humorous ,insightful and emotional in eqaul quantities . Worth a read whether you've seen the movie or not .
8.The white tiger by ARavind Aidga
Balram Halwai is :a man who sees tomorrow when others see today" and will do whatever it takes to rise above the social class he was born into- in his Machivellian world view, deception ,burglary and even murder can be justified . Through him Adiga's 2008 Booker prize win is a concise portrayal of modern India ,where new found capitalism meets age-old casteism ,where glitzy new cities are built in the ruins of rural India and where money talks and morals are futile,Balram narrative illustrated the price contemporary India pays to acquire economic prosperity.
9. Narcopolis by Jeet thayil
Jeet 2012 book -shortlisted debut novel is a series of interconnected vignettes recounting what life in the sordid underbelly of Bombay was like ,before its reincarnation as Mumbai. Dom Ullis is the dysfunctional narrator,but the real protagonist is the metropolis itself -at one both tempting and grotesque in its array of addictions and deviance and the underworld that composes its lethal side , Part roman-a-clef ,part cathartic confession, the dis orienting ,hypnotic prose is interposed with observations about the hypocrisies and complexities of Indian society .
10.Delhi is Not Far by Ruskin Bond
Summing up Ruskin Bond's contribution to Indian writing is no easy task,From short stories to novellas ,non fiction and children 's fiction-you name it , this Anglo-Indian author has left his indelible mark on every aspect of Indian writing . Delhi if not far his critically acclaimed 1994 novella ,deals with the small -towner's ultimate dream-making it to the big city .Arun an amateur writer of Urdu detective novels is ,bidding his time in the sleepy ,fictitious town of Pipalnagar until he pens his breakthrough novel ,which he believes will be his gateway to Delhi, a dream every Pipalnagar resident harbors .Imbued with the charm and subtle humor unique to Bond , this is a story about optimism ,dreams and human foibles.
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