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If your idea of Indian literature begins and ends with the books you were assigned in school, you're in for a surprise.
Indian novels are messy, funny, heartbreaking, wildly ambitious, and impossible to fit into a single genre. One moment you're navigating family drama in a bustling city, the next you're swept into stories of love, politics, history, identity, and everything in between.
The best Indian novels of course share great stories and transport you into the world of fiction. But they also introduce unforgettable characters that spark conversations about the very society that we live in.
Whether you're looking to diversify your reading list or simply searching for your next can't-put-it-down read, these are the Indian novels that deserve a spot on every book lover's lifetime reading list.
A historical fiction, The Hungry Tide, is set of off the easternmost coast of India where the immense archipelago of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans lie. Life here is precarious, ruled by the unforgiving tides and the constant threat of attack by Bengal tigers. Into this place of vengeful beauty come two seekers from different worlds, whose lives collide with tragic consequences.
The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonising sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
Formerly India's most corrupt tourist guide, Raju—just released from prison—seeks refuge in an abandoned temple. Mistaken for a holy man, he plays the part and succeeds so well that God himself intervenes to put Raju's newfound sanctity to the test.
In a newly independent India, a young woman resists arrange marriage and a politician's son has a transgressive affair.
A rich Indian family's ambitious driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top as an entrepreneur.
A Young Adult novel about adolescence The Room on the Roof brilliantly describes the hopes and passions that capture young minds and hearts.
A retired widow, Nanda Kul is old. She has chosen to spend her last years high in the mountains, but her solitude is broken with the arrival of her great-granddaughter, Raka. Through the long hot summer, hidden dependencies and old wounds are uncovered, until tragedy becomes inevitable.
Anandamath is a Bengali Indian-nationalist historical novel, written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and published in 1882. It is inspired by and set in the background of the Sannyasi rebellion and Great Bengal famine of 1770.
Set in Bombay during the last decades of the twentieth century, Em and The Big Hoom tells the compelling story of the Mendeses mother, father, daughter and son.
A semi-autobiography, The Illicit Happiness of Other People is a psychological thriller that depicts a 17-year-old cartoonist Unni Chacko who does something inexplicable. The novel explores the interplay of human psychology, existential nihilism and misanthropy, as well as the complexities of adolescence and sexual repression, among other things.
Based on a massacre that took place in the village of Kilvenmani on Christmas day, 1968, the novel critiques caste and class oppression by exposing the brutal realities faced by Dalit agricultural workers.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy.