100 Best Indian Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best indian books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
William DalrympleOf all the great modern Indian novels, of which there has been a flood, Arundhati Roy is the one I enjoyed most. It’s got that fabulous quality, in the literal sense. It has a craftsmanship to it, and one of the greatest endings to any novel. There are so few modern novels which end perfectly, with that perfect click into place, the lock clicking shut. But it has that, and it’s a very... (Source)
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As... more
Stuart RutherfordA great romp of a novel, set in western India. In a way, it’s a precursor of Slumdog Millionaire, but much darker. (Source)
Jacqueline NovogratzA Dickensian novel that captures the essence of being poor in urban India in ways extraordinary and deeply human. (Source)
Michael PeelThe book is full of these terrible moments and yet at the end of it you feel strangely uplifted. (Source)
'Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch.' Mohsin Hamid, Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
'In the grand illusions of a "rising" India, Aravind Adiga has found a subject Gogol might have envied. With remorselessly and delightfully mordant wit The White Tiger anatomises the fantastic cravings of... more
Shekhar KapurIt’s an amazing book, White Tiger. Arvind Adiga at this best ! Read many scripts, none had the sheer power of the book .. great to know that there is one that measures up to the book , good luck! @priyankachopra https://t.co/VsvZFBdmy8 (Source)
Robert McCrumThis book won the Man Booker prize and I think it is a wonderful book which is written in this very gripping Indian English. It is very high octane. Here is someone who has taken this phenomenon of the liberation of English into the global arena and turned it into literature. He is Indian, highly educated and a very good writer and he has taken a what can be sometimes incomprehensible global form... (Source)
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.
Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of... more
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Josh WaitzkinOne of the most beautiful novels I found. Just a ecstatically beautiful book. (Source)
Irina MarinescuI am always eager to learn how people think and form friendships, how they deal with life's challenges and still remain human. This book delivers that and even more! Shantaram takes you on an incredible journey and you return a changed person. (Source)
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a... more
Barack ObamaFact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads (Source)
Bill GatesKatherine Boo spent three years getting to know the people of Annawadi, a slum of about 3,000 people on the edge of a sewage-filled lake in India’s largest city. Her book is a poignant reminder of how much more work needs to be done to address the inequities in the world. But it’s also an uplifting story of people striving to make a life for themselves, sacrificing for their families, and in... (Source)
Adam MinterVivid scenes of walking down Mumbai’s Airport Road, lined by shacks and trash pickers, and behind them are walls, and behind them are the finest five star hotels in India. (Source)
Leah LizarondoGiven free time to do anything I would read fiction. This book took me out of a long dry spell because it is a collection of short stories that I could read while in the bath. Each story is written so beautifully, I still remember putting the book down from time to time, just to close my eyes and absorb what I just read. (Source)
Jane KamenskyLahirihas a great knack for showing both the closeness and the distance of peoples and cities. They seem so close together at the same time, they’re incredibly far apart. (Source)
In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an... more
Agnivo Niyogi ( )Jhumpa Lahiri. The name itself evokes nostalgia. Her book ‘The Namesake’ was among the first ones I bought from College Street after shifting to #Kolkata. She is synonymous with Presidency (College) for me. The Bengali in me will forever be in love with your works. Happy Birthday (Source)
Kaushik BasuAs a book on recent India, it’s one of the best, maybe the best, that I’ve read – a mammoth amount of information, put together in a way that anybody can read. (Source)
Pankhuri PathakIf I were only allowed... One cuisine: Mughlai One author: J K Rowling One musician: Jagjeet Singh One season: Monsoon One city: Varanasi One game: Tekken 3 One book: India After Gandhi by Ramchandra Guha One movie: PS I Love You One colour: Black How about you? https://t.co/yG0cfCzRBj (Source)
Patrick FrenchIt gets right inside that period of the first few decades after independence in a way that I don’t think any other book does. (Source)
Ed SmithMy father, who’s a novelist and was a teacher for many years, taught Vikram when he came to England to study for his A-levels in the 1970s. I can remember my dad telling me later on, in the late 1980s, that one of his ex-pupils was going to be the greatest writer of his generation. When I was in my teens Vikram came to talk at his old school, where I was studying, and he stayed with us. That was... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
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Ian BurumaOne of the novel’s strengths is that it’s not polemical. It’s very clear that Forster disapproved of colonial rule, but he doesn’t paint a caricature of brutal Brits and Indian victims. It’s much more subtle than that. The character of Cyril Fielding, the young Englishman full of goodwill, is true to life in that a lot of British people in India at the time did a lot of good – but in the end it... (Source)
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Bhagavad-Gita (Tanrı’nın Şarkısı), Hindu dininin en önemli ve en kutsal metinlerinden biridir. Büyük Hint destanı Mahabharata’nın bir bölümünü oluşturur.
Savaşçı prens Arcuna ile dostu ve arabacısı, aynı zamanda Tanrı Vishnu’nun yeryüzünde bedene bürünmüş bir zuhuru (Avatar) olan Şri Krişna... more
Ryan HolidayI read The Bhagavad Gita, which is something I wasn’t ready for before, but glad to finally understand. (Source)
Bernard TanThe “Tao Te King” by Lao Tzu probably resonated with me the strongest, but others like the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “Bhagavad Gita” or Zen Buddhist scriptures were also real eye-openers, even for a non-religious person like myself. (Source)
Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them. It is the 1960s, and Udayan--charismatic and impulsive--finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate... more
Barack ObamaThe president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and... more
...Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification, the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realised by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification, therefore, must remain purification in all walks of life. And purification being... more
Barack ObamaAccording to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. (Source)
Tim CookI have two books going right now: One is the Bobby Kennedy book [“Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon,” by Larry Tye] that just came out. The other is quite an old book. It’s a Gandhi book [“Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth”] that I got interested in because we went to the Gandhi museum when we were in India recently. I tend to like nonfiction and... (Source)
Cory BookerA profound read. (Source)
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she... more
Chelsea FrankI read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. (Source)
Gabriel CoarnaI started reading "Eat, Pray, Love" as soon as I finished watching Elizabeth Gilbert give this talk. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Two men - a boy who grows into early manhood and an old ascetic priest, the lama - are at the center of the novel. A quest faces them both. Born in India, Kim is nevertheless white, a sahib. While he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama. His aim, as he moves chameleon-like through the two cultures, is to reconcile these opposing strands, while... more
Mark TullyKim is the story of a young boy who falls in with a Tibetan lama and joins in with the lama’s search for his spiritual goal. I have always loved the book because of Kipling’s wonderful writing. I think it is Kipling’s greatest book. I also love it because the descriptions of India at that time are so vivid. Bear in mind what I said earlier about the way that the British were, on the whole,... (Source)
Stephen EvansThis is the fictionalised account of the Great Game, telling the story of an Anglo-Indian boy who is recruited by British spy masters in India during the latter part of the 19th century. But the book adds up to far more than that. Kim’s nickname is ‘little friend of all the world’, because he straddles Western and Indian cultures. The book is a sympathetic and sensitive attempt, by an Englishman... (Source)
Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to a time that is half history, half myth, and wholly magical. Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the legendary Pandavas brothers in the Mahabharat, the novel gives us a new interpretation of this ancient tale.
The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated... more
Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the... more
Rand FishkinEmpathy is at the core of my beliefs, and this is one of the best books I’ve ever read that fosters empathetic thinking. It’s also a great reminder of how hard it is to accomplish anything when your life circumstances and surroundings negatively contribute to progress and a great reminder to stay humble. (Source)
As the story unfolds, Ram explains to his lawyer how he knew the answer to each question by telling a chapter of his amazing life—from the day he was salvaged from a dustbin to his meeting with a security-crazed Australian army colonel while performing as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal. Stunning a television audience of millions,... more
The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away. 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... more
Anthony JuliusI’m interested in the trials, of course – particularly the trial here, but also the trial in the States – because of what they meant in the context of the 1960s. Just as I’m interested in what The Satanic Verses meant at the moment of its publication in 1989/90: with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the extinction of socialism as a project of human liberation, and,... (Source)
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the... more
Barack ObamaAs a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years. (Source)
Daniel HamermeshThis novel from a decade ago should be read by every American interested in immigration. While it deals with a lot of medical details, the essence of it is about urban life in developing countries and about the immigrant experience. It is both moving and thought-provoking. (Source)
India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian," Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition.
The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and... more
William DalrympleIt’s definitely not the first book you should read on India, it’s for someone who knows the country well, but it’s a wonderfully erudite, discursive, witty, clever book. (Source)
Kaushik BasuDepending how you count, almost any nation could be portrayed as argumentative. But he uses this central theme to range over an amazing breadth of scholarship (Source)
Pankaj MishraThe book does a tremendous job of giving you a sense of the many, many layers of history, of identities, that constitute this society. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a... more
Robert Macfarlane@srijanapiya17 @GhoshAmitav It’s a brilliant book. One I have both read and taught here in Cambridge. (Source)
Cassie KnightI selected this book because it is set in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, which is the mangrove coastal area that is prone to cyclones. It contains a vivid description of a cyclone. Just last week I was visiting the cyclone-hit area of the Sundarbans and to have an image of what it is like makes it so much more real. Even though I have spoken to people who have lived through a cyclone, I sometimes... (Source)
Ahmede HussainWhat I really liked about this novel is the way it describes an individual’s place in history. It’s not so much that Ghosh makes a judgement on whether we are agents or victims of history, but he explores the different ways in which individuals react to particular incidents, and how some manage to overcome adversity. The Glass Palace follows the life of the last Burmese king and his family. It... (Source)
In conjunction with the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund in New Delhi, Oxford proudly announces the reissue of Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India, two famous works by Jawaharlal Nehru. One of modern day's most articulate statesmen, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a on a wide variety of subjects. Describing himself as "a dabbler in many things," he committed his life not only to politics but also to nature and wild life, drama, poetry, history, and science, as well as many other fields. These two volumes help to illuminate the depth of his interests and knowledge and...
moreA middle-class woman from Calcutta finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for two months of every year . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment watching her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . The twenty-third in a... more
Mistry Law is handling the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen goes through the papers, she notices something strange: all three have signed over their inheritance to a charity. What will... more
Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia.
Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall. When he was a young man the advent of Google Earth led him to pore over satellite... more
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on an intimate journey of many years across the Indian subcontinent--from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war.
It is an aching love story and a decisive remonstration, a story told in a whisper, in a shout, through unsentimental tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Each of its characters... more
Maria RamosRamos will take the summer to examine some of the questions weighing more heavily on humankind as we contemplate our collective future: what happens when we can write our own genetic codes, and what happens when we create technology that is meaningfully more intelligent than us. The Gene: An Intimate History—Siddhartha Mukherjee Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies—Nick Bostrom The... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Ann WiddecombeMowgli has great adventures: we have the Bandar-log, and Kaa the snake who at one point almost swallows up Mowgli’s later protector, Bagheera the panther. But there is nobody else. (Source)
Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded... more
William DalrympleLike Partition, this story has been much told, but Edward Luce’s account is authoritative, balanced, sensible and enjoyable. If there is a businessman going to India who wants to get a hang of the economics of the country in an accessible form, this is the book, no question. Luce was the Financial Times correspondent, married to an Indian, and really got under the skin of the place, really... (Source)
Introducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story.” Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan’s imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human experience. This edition includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize- winning author... more
She came into the world in the year 1577, to the howling accompaniment of a ferocious winter storm. As the daughter of starving refugees fleeing violent persecution in Persia, her fateful birth in a roadside tent sparked a miraculous reversal of family fortune, culminating in her... more
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... more
Tariq RamadanA great speech by the author of the excellent book : "The Inglorious Empire" @ShashiTharoor 1/2 #India https://t.co/K2ywc8JypW (Source)
Seventy years ago, at midnight on August 14, 1947, the Union Jack began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. A fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen—but the price of freedom was high, as a nation erupted into riots and bloodshed, partition and war.
Freedom at Midnight is the true story of the events surrounding Indian independence, beginning with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten of Burma as the last Viceroy of British India, and ending... more
The cousins' bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. Urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with... more
But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she... more
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army.
The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course... more
Andrew AdonisAnyone who thinks there’s much good to say about the British Empire should read @DalrympleWill’s brilliant book on the East India Company. A long tale of plunder, extortion, war & murder Maybe the ‘dominions’ are different, but not for indigenous peoples of Australia & N Zealand (Source)
Carl Malamud@jamie_love I have. Wonderful book. (Source)
Ken JusterGreat to welcome renowned author @DalrympleWill to #RooseveltHouse. Excellent discussion with this warm and thoughtful writer about his new book “The Anarchy,” which broadens our understanding of India’s complex history. #CulturalDiplomacy https://t.co/va2FL5Uefy (Source)
The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and... more
Naval RavikantIt actually read like a modern-day poetic religious tome. Up there with the Bhagavad-gita, the Tao Te Ching, The Bible, The Qur’an. It was written in that style where it had that feel of religiosity and truth, but it was very approachable and beautiful and non-denominational and non-secretarian. I really liked that. I loved that book. He has a gift for poetically describing what children are... (Source)
Kaci Lambe KaiI also really love The Prophet by Gibran. He's a phenomenal writer and poet. (Source)
Nadia Al SheikhThe Prophet by Kahlil Gibran is a beautiful illustration of wisdom written in a story telling that takes you into a mysterious journey, I never get tired of reading it. (Source)
Steve JobsOne book in particular stayed with Jobs his entire life, and Isaacson noted that it was the only book Jobs had downloaded on his iPad 2: “Autobiography of a Yogi,” “the guide to meditation and spirituality that he had first read as a teenager,” Isaacson writes, “then re-read in India and had read once a year ever since.” (Source)
Marc BenioffIf you haven't read it, and if you want to understand Steve Jobs, it's a goood idea to dip into [this book]. (Source)
Dominic Steil[One of the books that had the biggest impact on .] (Source)
Das shows how India's policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when the government instituted sweeping reforms that paved the way for extraordinary growth. Das traces these developments and tells... more
Brigid KeenanIt’s a story about a British family in India in the last days of the British Raj (it all takes place in the early 1940s before the British left). That was the time when I was in India as a child, but I was 20 years younger than the heroine of the book, Daphne Manners. The basic plot is that Daphne falls in love with a young Indian journalist who has been educated in England. He’s quite posh, and... (Source)
In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.
S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann...
moreLex Fridman[I admire] the purity of that way of life. (Source)
When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly no match for the might of the English. But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising... more
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Seven years in the making, Sacred Games is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh—and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.
Sartaj, one of the very few... more
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in... more
Princess Jahanara, the courageous daughter of the emperor and his wife, recounts their mesmerizing tale, while sharing her own parallel story of forbidden love with the celebrated architect of the Taj Mahal. Set during... more
For Little Bear, the Iroquois Indian brave, comes to life... less
B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to... more
The portly Vish Puri is India’s most accomplished detective, at least in his own estimation, and is also the hero of an irresistible new mystery series set in hot, dusty Delhi. Puri’s detective skills are old-fashioned in a Sherlock Holmesian way and a little out of sync with the tempo of the modern city, but Puri is clever and his methods work.
The Case of the Missing Servant shows Puri (“Chubby” to his... more
The plot centers round Mary Lennox, a young English girl who returns to England from India, having suffered the immense trauma by losing both her parents in a cholera epidemic. However, her memories of her parents are not pleasant, as... more
Clare MorpurgoThe book is about a girl coming to live in England from India. She is a sickly child who had a pretty awful early childhood in India. (Source)
M G LeonardThe redemptive power of the natural world and gardening was something that struck a chord with me. (Source)
Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of... more
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
From the bestselling author of Trail of Broken Wings comes an epic story of the unrelenting force of love, the power of healing, and the invincible desire to dream.
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family’s past.
Intoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi—her grandmother’s former...
moreWilliam DalrymplePartition is a very complicated story. Many people have tried to tell it before, but this is far and away the best book I’ve read on Partition. I don’t think she had particular access to any brand-new material. She certainly didn’t get her hands on the material she would most have liked, the love letters between Nehru and Lady Mountbatten [wife of Lord Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India]. Because... (Source)
Pankaj MishraThis does an excellent job of describing the lives, aspirations and frustrations of a diverse cast of Indians who have lived through the last 60 years. Naipaul is very much in the background here; he just lets people speak (Source)
The poor in India are, too often, reduced to statistics. In the dry language of development reports and economic projections, the true misery of the 312 million who live below the poverty line, or the 26 million displaced by various projects, or the 13 million who suffer from tuberculosis gets overlooked. In this thoroughly researched study of the poorest of the poor, we get to see how they manage, what sustains them, and the efforts, often ludicrous, to do something for them. The people who figure in this book typify the lives and aspirations of a large... more
A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of Year
A NPR Best Book of the Year
In Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the Ibis began its treacherous journey across the Indian Ocean, bound for the cane fields of Mauritius with a cargo of indentured servants. Now, in River of Smoke, the former slave ship flounders in the Bay of Bengal, caught in the midst of a deadly cyclone. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave... more
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a...
Adam Conover@TheBaltimoreSon @CharlesCMann Sure it! A total revolution in my understanding of history, all in one book. Amazing stuff. (Source)
Scott KeyesIt’s one of those books that takes everything you thought you knew about the history of European colonialists and indigenous groups in the Americas and turns it on its head. Just a fascinating deep-dive into early American history that questions a lot of dogma we were taught in school. (Source)
Colin CallowayThe book provides a huge hemispheric overview. (Source)
*A Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016*
*Finalist for the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award in Best Western Historical Nonfiction*
Bringing together a pageant of fascinating characters including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of other military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud, The Earth is Weeping--lauded by Booklist as "a beautifully written work of understanding and... more
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The result of 10 year's living and traveling throughout the Indian subcontinent, The Age of Kali... more
Elegantly written and... more
When Poornima first meets Savitha, she feels something she thought she lost for good when her mother died: hope. Poornima's father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt... more
The World's Bestselling Mystery
"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."
"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.
"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die.
"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
Rian Johnson@AdamLanceGarcia I think And Then There Were None is her best book, but The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Curtain are probably tied for my personal favorite. (Source)
Welcome to 2 States, a story about Krish and Ananya. They are from two different states of India, deeply in love and want to get married. Of course, their parents don't agrees. To convert their love story into a love marriage,... more
Patrick FrenchChetan Bhagat is one of the most commercially successful novelists in India at the moment. I find him a very entertaining and revealing writer. It’s a boy-meets-girl story, about Krish and Ananya. (Source)
Ahmede HussainThis is one of the first books I read in English that was written by an Indian. What amazed me at the time was the sarcasm within it, which is very strong. The novel is about a young trainee civil servant called Agastya Sen who is posted to Madna, in India’s hinterland. Agastya had grown up in the cosmopolitan city of Delhi and he finds it very difficult to cope with his new environment. He lacks... (Source)
Every woman has a secret life . . .
Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she’s spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father’s death leaves the family... more
Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. With remarkable fortitude and courage, she meets changing times and fights poverty and disaster.
This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those... more
Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a tale of mad passions and... more
Michelle Jana ChanThis book is one of my favourites of his, a real family saga with strong connective tissue between generations, an ambitious and brave story; it’s exuberant with colour and passion, and at times laugh-out-loud funny. (Source)
Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her... more
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Offering rare insight into the complexities of Indian middle-class society, R. K.... more
William DalrympleIt’s one of the world’s great myths, an epic poem. It’s eight times the length of the Bible, one of the great works of literature of mankind. I came to it via the Peter Brook film, and read the script subsequently, and it is every bit as good as it’s made out to be. A very rare thing. It has a sort of Shakespearian ambiguity; you feel as much for the baddies as for the goodies. No one is pure.... (Source)
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... more
Rana DasguptaThis is a wonderful debut. It’s a big novel: an old-fashioned, multigenerational novel, which feels neither like a debut nor a book written by somebody so young. This is the story of a young woman from Bangalore whose mother has recently died, who goes to Kashmir (where her mother spent a lot of time) to find out more about some of the hidden aspects of her life. Through that, the author tells a... (Source)
The Wonder That was India takes a look at the country's history from the time of the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization. It explores the possible causes for the decline of the Harappan civilization and settlements. The book talks about the possibility of the Harappans having moved towards the south and settled in the peninsular region.
The author also... more
When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the... more
Discover Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie’s classic fantasy novel
Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz. In this captivating work of fantasy... more
When brain surgeon Thomas Eapen decides to cut short a visit to his mother's home in India in 1979, he sets into motion a series of events that will forever haunt him and his wife, Kamala; their intellectually precocious son, Akhil; and their watchful daughter, Amina. Now, twenty years later, in the heat of a New Mexican summer, Thomas has begun having bizarre conversations with his... more
4000 years ago, He was just a man.
The hunt is on. The sinister Naga warrior has killed his friend Brahaspati and now stalks his wife Sati. Shiva, the Tibetan immigrant who is the prophesied destroyer of evil, will not rest till he finds his demonic adversary. His vengeance and the path to evil will lead him to the door of the Nagas, the serpent people. Of that he is certain.
The evidence of the malevolent rise of evil is everywhere. A kingdom is dying as it is held to ransom for a miracle drug. A crown prince is murdered. The Vasudevs... more
Don't have time to read the top Indian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.