1.

The Untouchables by Mulk Raj Anand

2. Kanthapura by Raja Rao
3. The Village by the Sea and Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai (Anita Desai is amazing
and you could try some of her other novels too)
4. Short stories by Ruskin Bond (Our trees still grow in Dehra) and his novel A Flight of
Pigeons based on the Indian War of Independence in 1857
5. R.K. Narayanan - Malgudi Days, The Guide
6. Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines (mainly because it is losely based on the partition) but
you should also read his The Hungry Tide, Sea of Poppies, The Calcutta Chromosome, Imam
and the Indian, In an Antique Land.
7. Midnight's Children and Shame by Salman Rushdie. You can try reading other books by
Rushdie if you are fond of magic realism.
8. You can try covering the Naxalite Movement which has a place of obvious importance in
Indian political history. There are a lot of non-fiction books on the subject and I can send you
some if you are interested. Most fiction on the movement is in Bengali and though there are
translations of some, I believe they are not very good. Most of the good work is in regional
languages. You can look up Half a Life which is loosely based on it as well as Jhumpa
Lahiri's The Lowland. We were discussing about Lahiri, I remember, but I liked The Lowland
slightly better than most of her previous works. It's a fast, breezy read and quite easily
available. It deals with a micro-history of the Naxalite Movement and there are a couple of
images from the book which have somewhat moved me deeply.
9. Vikram Seth- A Suitable Boy, An Equal Music (Also do read some of Seth's poetry which
is brilliant)
10. Vikram Chanda, Red Earth and Pouring Rain
11. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
12. V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas
13. Attia Hossain, Sunlight on a Broken Column
14. Qurratulain Hyder, River of Fire (translation)
15. Also, if you are interested in modernity in India and the 1970s alongwith the Indian
history of political radicalism during that time, you should absolutely watch some films by
Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. Ray is brilliant - you can start with his Calcutta trilogy - but
try to watch as many of his films as possible. His films should be easily available. If not, let
me know and I will try to send them to you. But uploading films and trying to send them
should be a slow and painstaking process.
16. Though this isn't fiction, this is a very important and interesting book (if you haven't read
this already that is) The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru
17. Tagore (Mostly everything will be in translation which is, as we told you, not very good.
Learn Bengali perhaps?)
18. Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Aga Shahid Ali (one of my favourites),
Jayanta Mahapatra, Arun Kolatkar, Kamala Das, Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, Vikram Seth
(you can find many of their poems online)
19. Plays by Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Utpal Dutta, Mahesh
Dattani, Bhisham Sahni, Habib Tanvir, Asif Currimbhoy (all of them except Asif
Currimbhoy write in regional languages but there are good English translations of Tendulkar
and Karnad especially. And it's really worthwhile taking a look at their plays)