ONTD Reading Challenge Around the World [OCTOBER - INDIA]
Hi everyone! October is nearly here and it's time to prepare for our next reading challenge: to read a book written by an Indian author or about India!
A lot of what gets published in the West from India was written originally in English, but as India is a country with such an incredible diversity of languages, it is important to highlight that there are ALSO many incredible works in translation available in bookshops and libraries. This post included both original English works and translated works, and OP hopes it will be a good starting point for you guys to discover another side of Indian literature. As always, OP has also sought to highlight female authors, and there is also a section of non-fiction at the end.
Because there are SO MANY famous Indian books, OP has chosen to highlight new, up-and-coming, underrated or not-so-well-known authors. This means that the usual suspects, like Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga, Vikram Seth, etc, have NOT been included here. They are all great, and you should definitely (DEFINITELY) read their stuff, but you'll find their books recommended in every other list about Indian books. Chances are you'll have heard of them, or read them already. OP considered that highlighting other authors (that you might not find in every list) would result in giving you guys more options to choose from.
Well, enough talking from me, let's get to the recs!
A Burning (Megha Majumdar)
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely--an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor--has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Deepa Annapara)
Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn’t let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away.
Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.
But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.
Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India.
Night Theater (Vikram Paralkar)
A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work.
But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.
So begins a night of quiet work, "as if the crickets had been bribed," during which the surgeon realizes his future is tied more closely to that of the dead family than he could have imagined. By dawn, he and his assistant have gained knowledge no mortal should have.
Hellfire (Leesa Gazi)
OP note: Translated from Bengali
The holy Prophet received his revelations from the Creator at forty. Which meant that even in the eyes of Allah, ‘forty’ held some special meaning. Something special happened at forty, something special was going to happen.
For the sisters Lovely and Beauty, home is a cage. Their mother Farida Khanam never lets them out of her hawk-eyed gaze.
Leesa Gazi’s Hellfire opens with Lovely's first ever solo expedition to Gausia Market on her fortieth birthday. There will be many firsts for her today, but she mustn’t forget the curfew Farida Khanam has ordained. As Lovely roams the streets of Dhaka, her mother’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. The twisted but working arrangements of a fragile household begin to assume a macabre quality as the day progresses.
Hangwoman (KR Meera)
OP note: translated from Malayalam
The Grddha Mullick family takes pride in the ancient lineage they trace from four hundred years before Christ. They burst with marvelous tales of hangmen and hangings in which the Grddha Mullicks figure as eyewitnesses to the momentous events that have shaped the history of the subcontinent.
In the present day, the youngest member of the family, twenty-two-year-old Chetna, is appointed the first woman executioner in India, assistant and successor to her father Phanibhushan. Thrust suddenly into the public eye, even starring in her own reality show, Chetna’s life explodes under the harsh lights of television cameras. As the day of her first execution approaches, she breaks out of the shadow of a domineering father and the thrall of a brutally manipulative lover, and transforms into a charismatic performer in her own right.
Meera’s spectacular imagination turns the story of Chetna’s life into an epic and perverse coming-of-age tale. Will the ardent young woman be able to escape the love that binds her? Will she bring herself to take a life? Will she add lustre to the illustrious name of Grddha Mullick? Or will she succumb to the dazzle of celebrity and the thrill of power over life and death?
The Far Field (Madhuri Vijay)
In the wake of her mother's death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir's politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.
Lifting the Veil (Ismat Chughtai)
OP note: Translated from Urdu
Lifting the Veil is a bold and irreverent collection of writing from India's most controversial feminist writer. These stories celebrate life in all its complexities: from a woman who refuses marriage to a man she loves to preserve her freedom, to a Hindu and a Muslim teenager pulled apart by societal pressures, to eye-opening personal accounts of the charges of obscenity the author faced in court for stories found in this book.
Wickedly funny and unflinchingly honest, Lifting the Veil explores the power of female sexuality while slyly mocking the subtle tyrannies of middle-class life. In 1940s India, an unlikely setting for female rebellion, Ismat Chughtai was a rare and radical storyteller born years ahead of her time.
Ghachar Ghochar (Vivek Shanbhag)
OP note: translated from Kannada
A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”-a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied.
Raag Darbari (Shrilal Shukla)
OP note: Translated from Hindi
Raag Darbari is a Hindi novel written by Srilal Sukla, an author known for his social and political satire. He was awarded the Sahitya Academy Award, the highest Indian literary award, in 1969 for this novel.
The novel highlights the failing values present in post-Independence Indian society. It exposes the helplessness of intellectuals in the face of a strong and corrupt nexus between criminals, businessmen, police and politicians.
The novel is narrated from the point of view of Ranganath, a research student in history, who comes to live with his uncle, Vaidyaji, in a village named Shivpal Ganj for a few months. He learns how his uncle uses all the village institutions - the village school, the village panchayat (a local elected body), the local government offices for his political purpose. The conduct of his uncle and the petty village politicians is in stark contrast to the ideals that Ranganath has learnt to aspire to during his university education.
One Part Woman (Perumal Murugan)
OP note: Translated from Tamil. This was an extremely controversial book, leading to all kinds of harassment and abuse against the writer, and finally a landmark ruling from the Madras High Court upholding freedom of speech.
Kali and Ponna's efforts to conceive a child have been in vain. Hounded by the taunts and insinuations of others, all their hopes come to converge on the chariot festival in the temple of Ardhanareeswara, the half-female god. Everything hinges on the one night when rules are relaxed and consensual union between any man and woman is sanctioned. This night could end the couple s suffering and humiliation. But it will also put their marriage to the ultimate test.
NON-FICTION
Inglourious Empire: What the British Did to India (Shashi Tharoor)
OP note: Tharoor is a diplomat and politician. You might be familiar with his viral lecture delivered at Oxford University, where he argues that Britain owes reparations for its Imperialism. This book is basically a response to pro-Imperialist works like Niall Ferguson's How Britain Made the World.
In the eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was as large as Europe’s. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.
British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial ‘gift’ - from the railways to the rule of law - was designed in Britain’s interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain’s Industrial Revolution was founded on India’s deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.
In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy.
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Anita Anand)
In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond.
Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.
Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War - and, above all, the fight for female suffrage. She was bold and fearless, attacking politicians, putting herself in the front line and swapping her silks for a nurse's uniform to tend wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefields. Meticulously researched and passionately written, this enthralling story of the rise of women and the fall of empire introduces an extraordinary individual and her part in the defining moments of recent British and Indian history.
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and India's Quest for Independence
When Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, ordered Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to Amritsar, he wanted Dyer to bring the troublesome city to heel. Sir Michael had become increasingly alarmed at the effect Gandhi was having on his province, as well as recent demonstrations, strikes, and shows of Hindu-Muslim unity. All these things, to Sir Michael, were a precursor to a second Indian revolt. What happened next shocked the world. An unauthorized gathering in the Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michael’s law enforcers. Dyer marched his soldiers into the walled garden, blocking the only exit. Then, without issuing any order to disperse, he instructed his men to open fire, turning their guns on the thickest parts of the crowd, filled with over a thousand unarmed men, women, and children. For ten minutes, the soldiers continued firing, stopping only when they ran out of ammunition.
According to legend, eighteen-year-old Sikh orphan Udham Singh was injured in the attack, and remained surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth, smeared it across his forehead, and vowed to kill the men responsible.
The truth, as the author has discovered, is more complex-but no less dramatic. Award-winning journalist Anita Anand traced Singh’s journey through Africa, the United States, and across Europe until, in March 1940, he finally arrived in front of O’Dwyer himself in a London hall ready to shoot him down. The Patient Assassin shines a devastating light on one of history’s most horrific events, but it reads like a taut thriller and reveals the incredible but true story behind a legend that still endures today.
Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History (Ira Mukhoty)
The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women’s heroism has tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women portrayed-Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal-share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which they are willing to fight to the death if need be. In every case this belief leads them to confrontation with a horrified patriarchy.
In the book we meet lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan, who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth. Raziya, the battle-scarred warrior, who proudly claimed the title of Sultan, refusing its fragile feminine counterpart, Sultana; the courageous Meerabai who repudiated her patriarchal destiny as cloistered daughter-in-law of a Rajput clan; the gentle Mughal princess Jahanara: who claims the blessings of both Allah and the Prophet Muhammad and wishes ‘never to be forgotten’; Laxmibai, widow, patriot and martyr, who rides into legend and immortality fighting for her adopted son’s birthright; and Hazrat Mahal, courtesan, begum, and rebel queen, resolute till the very end in defying British attempts to seize her ex-husband’s kingdom.
In these engrossing portraits, mythological characters from thousands of years ago walk companionably besides historical figures from more recent times. They rise to reclaim their rightful place in history. Daughters, wives, courtesans, mothers, queens, goddesses, warriors-heroines.
Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir (Farah Bashir)
Rumours of Spring is the unforgettable account of Farah Bashir's adolescence spent in Srinagar in the 1990s. As Indian troops and militants battle across the cityscape and violence becomes the new normal, a young schoolgirl finds that ordinary tasks - studying for exams, walking to the bus stop, combing her hair, falling asleep - are riddled with anxiety and fear. With haunting simplicity, Farah Bashir captures moments of vitality and resilience from her girlhood amidst the increasing trauma and turmoil of passing years - secretly dancing to pop songs on banned radio stations; writing her first love letter; going to the cinema for the first time - with haunting simplicity. This deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir portrays how territorial conflict surreptitiously affects everyday lives in Kashmir.
MORE RECS
Indian sci-fi and fantasy novels
Modern Indian classics in translation
100 Books by Indian women
17 Must-read Indian books in English
10 translated books from India
sources 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
ONTD, what is your pick for this month? What is your favourite Indian book?