Indian Literature

A Bend in The River, the 1974 novel by Nobel Prize winner VS Naipaul, takes place in an unnamed postcolonial African town. The main character, Salim, narrates the story, which begins when he moves away from his family to the interior of the country to run a town shop. Salim is of Muslim Indian descent, but his family has lived in coastal Africa for many generations. He is neither fully Muslim Indian nor fully African. Salim... Read A Bend In The River Summary

A Burning by Megha Majumdar is a contemporary fiction novel that explores issues of tribalism, community, social media, and how we get ahead in a harsh world. Although the book takes place in India, its reflections on hope, humanity, and society are recognizable to all readers. The novel follows the interconnected narratives of Jivan, Lovely, and PT Sir after a terrorist attack in India. Jivan and Lovely’s chapters are narrated in first person with dialect... Read A Burning Summary

“A Devoted Son” is a short story by Indian author Anita Desai originally published in her 1978 collection Games at Twilight and Other Stories. The story is about the relationship between a father and son and examines how time and perspective can change the way actions and intentions are perceived. This collection also features another well-known story, "Games at Twilight," Varma is proud because his son, Rakesh, is at the top of the academic list... Read A Devoted Son Summary

Indian-born Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel A Fine Balance is the story of four characters from diverse backgrounds whose paths converge in 1975 India. Maneck Kohlah, a college student, has rented a room in the city. On his way to inspect the apartment of Dina Dalal, he meets two tailors, Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash (Om) Darji, also on their way to Dina’s to find sewing jobs.Dina hires the tailors to work from... Read A Fine Balance Summary

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A House for Mr. Biswas is a 1961 historical fiction novel by V. S. Naipaul. The story takes a postcolonial perspective of the life of a Hindu Indian man in British-owned and occupied Trinidad. Now regarded as one of Naipaul's most significant novels, A House for Mr. Biswas has won numerous awards and has been adapted as a musical, a radio drama, and a television show. This guide is written using an eBook version of... Read A House for Mr. Biswas Summary

A Long Way Home is a 2013 memoir by Saroo Brierley, an Indian-born author who was accidentally separated from his biological family at the age of five and adopted by an Australian couple. The memoir traces Saroo’s remarkable journey from India to Australia and back again 25 years later. The book inspired the 2016 film Lion and became a New York Times Best Seller after the film’s release. This guide refers to the 2015 edition published... Read A Long Way Home Summary

Published in 2007, Animal’s People by Indra Sinha was the 2008 winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Based in the fictional town of Khaufpur, which means “village of terror,” it centers around the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster and its aftereffects on the survivors. Told from the point of view of a 19-year-old Khaufpuri boy who was disfigured “that night,” the novel focuses on the West’s dehumanization... Read Animal's People Summary

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Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us debuted in 2018. The novel, an instant New York Times best seller, was lauded as one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, NPR, and more. It’s notable for its extensive use of flashbacks and shifting perspective, which moves between third and first person.Plot SummaryThe novel begins when Amar, a young man estranged from his traditional Indian Muslim family, comes home for his sister... Read A Place for Us Summary

“A Real Durwan” is the fourth story in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short-story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award. The story recounts the daily lives of the stair-sweeper, Boori Ma, and the families who share a building of flats in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) after the Partition of India in 1947. An English-born American author raised by Bengali parents, Lahiri is known for her characters’... Read A Real Durwan Summary

A River Sutra, a novel by Indian American author Gita Mehta, was first published in 1993. The novel is set on the banks of the Narmada River in India, and it is comprised of interconnected stories about characters who are drawn to the river. The narrator seeks to retreat from the world after his wife’s death, but he gains an appreciation for the lived experiences of humanity through the stories he hears. The novel discusses... Read A River Sutra Summary

“A Temporary Matter” by American author Jhumpa Lahiri was originally published in the New Yorker in 1998. Published in 1999, Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies opens with “A Temporary Matter.” The story follows Shoba and Shukumar, an Indian American married couple in their thirties, as they reconnect for one hour each evening during a planned electricity outage. Over the course of five nights, Shoba and Shukumar explore the complexities of... Read A Temporary Matter Summary

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) was first published in 1946 and has since become a much-loved and admired book around the world. It is regarded as one of the classics of 20th-century spiritual literature. In 1999, it was named by a HarperCollins panel of authors and scholars as one of the “100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century.” In the book, Yogananda tells the story of his life, beginning with his childhood... Read Autobiography of a Yogi Summary

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (2012) is a nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Katherine Boo. The book follows residents of a Mumbai slum called Annawadi. Boo, an American investigative journalist, was inspired to write the book by frequent visits to Mumbai with her husband, who is from the area. She spent several years among Annawadi’s residents, from 2007 to 2011, and the book recounts their struggles and... Read Behind the Beautiful Forevers Summary

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The chief protagonist of Brick Lane was born in an East Pakistan village in 1967, prior to Bangladesh Liberation War. In 1971, the nation won its independence only to suffer through a devastating famine and political turmoil marked by a succession of military coups. The narrative mostly takes place in 2001, concerning events in a Muslim immigrant community in London before and after the World Trade Center tragedy. In this span of a woman’s life... Read Brick Lane Summary

Burnt Shadows, first published in 2009, is the fifth novel by Pakistani-British author Kamila Shamsie. A political-historical novel, it was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which celebrates books that contribute to a greater understanding of racism and diversity. Shamsie has been shortlisted several times for a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; she also received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature... Read Burnt Shadows Summary

Clear Light of Day (1980) is Anita Desai’s sixth and—according to the author—most autobiographical novel. This novel was the first of three of Desai’s books to be nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize. Like other books in her corpus, such as Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), it deals with gender struggles in a modernizing India. Set against the backdrop of Indian Independence and Partition, it explores the lives... Read Clear Light of Day Summary

Since its publication in 1936, Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Coolie has become a landmark in modern Indian literature. The novel condemned the social, economic, and cultural impact of more than two centuries of British occupation and indicted India’s own rigid caste system, which had long separated its citizens into groups based on their work status and their ethnicity. The novel appeared at the height of a turbulent decade in which India itself, under the moral... Read Coolie Summary

Bapsi Sidhwa’s historical fiction novel Cracking India, first published in India in 1988 as Ice-Candy-Man, was translated into English under its current title in 1991. The 1947 partition of India that created the majority-Muslim country of Pakistan shapes the events of the novel. The novel begins in 1942, when India was an English colony. When Britain declared war on behalf of India during World War II, the move galvanized long-standing Indian independence movements until India... Read Cracking India Summary

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Fasting, Feasting is divided into two parts: Part I, set in a strict and authoritarian household in India and Part II, set in a cold and isolating home in the Massachusetts suburbs. Both sections of the novel are told in third-person-limited-omniscient point of view, chronicling two members of the same Indian family. In Part I, the narrator, through flashback, explores Uma’s quest to find independence and identity within the repressive and regimented household atmosphere of Mama... Read Fasting, Feasting Summary

“Games at Twilight” is a short story written by Indian author Anita Desai. It was originally published in 1978 in a collection titled Games at Twilight and Other Stories, which contains several texts that explore different aspects of Indian life in urban settings. That same year, Desai was nominated for the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel Fire on the Mountain. “Games at Twilight” focuses on a young boy who... Read Games at Twilight and Other Stories Summary

“Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” a short story written by Salman Rushdie, was first published in The New Yorker in 1987 and then reprinted in East, West, a collection of Rushdie’s short stories published in 1994. This anthology divides the stories into three sections: “East, “West,” and “East/West.” “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies” can be found in the “East” section. Most of this story takes place in a shantytown next to the British... Read Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies Summary

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Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a 1990 book for young adults, written by Salman Rushdie. Haroun is the follow-up to Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which was deemed blasphemous by the Ayatollah (a high-ranking Iranian clergyman) at the time, who pronounced a death sentence on the author. As a response to the ayatollah’s decree, Haroun explores themes of free speech, the need for storytelling, and the value of fiction.Plot SummaryThe novel begins with... Read Haroun and the Sea of Stories Summary

Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, by Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, was published in 1909 and inspires people in India to work for independence from British colonial control. The book outlines Gandhi’s critique of Britain’s domination of India; it urges the Indian people to reject English customs, laws, and industry in favor of traditional Indian ways. Gandhi also encourages India to reject armed conflict and instead adopt a policy of nonviolent, passive resistance.Hind Swaraj is... Read Hind Swaraj Summary

Homeless Bird, a novel written by Gloria Whelan and published in 2000, was a New York Times Best Seller and winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Marketed to middle grade readers, the novel has elements of historical fiction in its portrayal of cultural customs in India. Homeless Bird tells the story of Koly, a 13-year-old girl whose arranged marriage leads to her untimely widowhood. Through Koly’s coming-of-age journey from helplessness to... Read Homeless Bird Summary

The novel Cracking India (first published as Ice-Candy-Man in 1980), by Bapsi Sidhwa, explores the civil war that occurred during the Partition of India in 1947. The political and social upheaval engendered by independence and Partition included religious intolerance that led to mass violence, killings, mutilations, rapes, dismemberments, and the wholesale slaughter of infants, children, men, and women, along with the displacement of millions of refugees—Hindus fleeing to India and Muslims fleeing to Pakistan.Told from... Read Ice Candy Man Summary

Interpreter of Maladies is a 1999 short story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri, who is an American of Indian (specifically Bengali) heritage. The collection, Lahiri’s debut, was well-received and garnered many awards, including the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway prize. The nine stories are works of literary realism split between the immigrant experience in America and contemporary Indian life and have been held up as a model for high cultural pluralism, a subgenre... Read Interpreter of Maladies Summary

Told from the first-person point of view and in a non-linear style, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine is about the journey and personal development of a young Indian woman as she attempts to assimilate into American culture. Influenced by Mukherjee’s experiences, the title character, Jasmine, plays a series of different roles throughout her young life.At the heart of the novel is the struggle to find one’s identity, and yet be flexible and courageous enough to reinvent a... Read Jasmine Summary

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Kanthapura is a 1938 novel by Indian author Raja Rao, who has also written an autobiographical-style novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960). Set during the early days of the Indian struggle for independence, the novel chronicles the impact of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi on a small south Indian village named Kanthapura. This is Raja Rao’s most well-known and acclaimed book and primarily serves as a critique of the traditional Indian caste system. The... Read Kanthapura Summary

Kim is a novel by the prolific author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who was the first English-language recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel was originally released in a serialized version in 1900-1901, after which it was published in book form. It offers a wide-ranging view of the cultural and religious diversity of British India in the late-19th century, as perceived through the experience of an Indian-enculturated Irish boy named Kim. Along... Read Kim Summary

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Midnight’s Children is a 1981 magical realism novel by British American novelist Salman Rushdie. The story follows Saleem, a child born at the moment of India’s independence who possesses strange powers. The novel won many awards, including the Booker of Bookers Prize, which was awarded to the best all-time winner of the Booker Prize on the award’s 40th anniversary. Midnight’s Children has been adapted for theater, radio, and film. This guide uses the 2006 Vintage... Read Midnight's Children Summary

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Nectar in a Sieve is a 1954 classical fiction novel written by Kamala Markandaya, who was one of the most prominent 20th-century Indian novelists. It was her first novel and was named an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. The novel’s plot follows Rukmani, a poor farmer’s wife, as she learns what it means to survive and find happiness in postcolonial and post-partition India. Through Rukmani’s eyes, Markandaya explores the impacts of poverty, the... Read Nectar in a Sieve Summary

Published in 2010, novelist and poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s One Amazing Thing tells the story of nine people from diverse backgrounds who become trapped inside the visa office of the Indian Consulate after a major earthquake hits. As they wait for help to arrive, each person takes a turn telling a story from their own life, often revealing feelings or tales previously unshared. Told in third-person perspective from the point of view of each character... Read One Amazing Thing Summary

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The novel Q & A, by Vikas Swarup, chronicles the various misadventures of protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas, a penniless teenager who has been arrested for answering twelve questions correctly on the TV quiz show Who Will Win a Billion? Defying conventional temporal chronologies, each chapter, connected to a question from the quiz show, helps to explain how Thomas knew the correct answer, while alsoserving as a vignette of Thomas’s life. Q & A is a... Read Q & A Summary

Sea of Poppies, a novel by Amitav Ghosh published in 2008, tells the intertwining stories of several people who find themselves aboard the Ibis, a former slave ship, in the early 19th century. The principal characters are aboard the ship under varying and more and less desirable circumstances, and employing varying levels of deception. The novel takes place shortly before the First Opium War, and its major themes are of imperialism and colonialism under a... Read Sea of Poppies Summary

Secret Daughter (2010) is the debut novel of Canadian-Indian author Shilpi Somaya Gowda. Spanning twenty years, it follows two families who are mysteriously connected by an adopted daughter. A New York Times Bestseller, the novel has been translated into more than thirty languages and has sold more than a million copies. Godwa formed the idea for Secret Daughter while volunteering at an Indian orphanage as an undergraduate. Secret Daughter received much critical praise for its... Read Secret Daughter Summary

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Written by Salman Rushdie in 1983, Shame takes place in a fictionalized version of the city of Quetta in Pakistan. Although several characters are based on historic Pakistani politicians, the novel incorporates elements of magical realism to create a richly nuanced fable whose philosophical message transcends the boundaries of the ordinary. The novel explores themes of Shame Versus Shamelessness, the partition of Pakistan through Partition and Duality, and The Systemic Misogyny of Patriarchal Societies. Shame... Read Shame Summary