RAG Demo

Tag: 1990s

  • Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Guns, Germs, and Steel, published in 1997, starts from a question Jared Diamond says a New Guinean politician named Yali put to him: why did Europeans arrive with so much cargo while New Guineans had so little? Diamond sets out to explain why Eurasian societies, rather than those of the Americas, Africa or Australia, ended up conquering much of the world.

    His answer lies in environment rather than biology. Regions such as the Fertile Crescent happened to have wild plants and large animals suitable for domestication, which allowed food surpluses, dense populations, specialists, states and writing. Eurasia's east-west axis let crops and technology spread across similar climates, and living close to livestock bred diseases that later devastated peoples with no immunity, as in the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

    The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and became one of the most influential works of popular history. Historians and anthropologists have criticised it for environmental determinism and for underplaying human choices and colonial politics. Even so, it reframed how a generation of readers think about inequality between societies.

    Book details

    AuthorJared Diamond
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)480
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 1998

    Themes

    • Geographic determinism
    • Domestication of plants and animals
    • Epidemic disease
    • Conquest
    • Inequality between societies

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a bold, evidence-packed explanation of why world history unfolded so unequally.

    If you liked this, try

    • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
    • Collapse
    • 1491

  • City of Djinns

    City of Djinns, published in 1993, records a year that the young William Dalrymple spent living in Delhi with his wife, the artist Olivia Fraser. They rent rooms from the formidable Mrs Puri, a Punjabi refugee who rebuilt her family's fortunes after Partition, and ride around with a taxi driver, Balvinder Singh, whose opinions enliven many chapters.

    Dalrymple's method is to travel backwards in time. He talks to survivors of 1947 and of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, explores the remnants of British New Delhi and of the Mughal capital, visits Sufi shrines, eunuch communities and fading Anglo-Indian families, and finally searches for traces of the Delhi associated with the Mahabharata. The djinns of the title are the spirits believed to haunt the ruined city.

    Part travel book, part history and part comic memoir, it is full of affectionate portraits and eccentric encounters. It won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and established Dalrymple's reputation, and it remains one of the most popular introductions to the many cities layered within Delhi.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published1993
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreTravel
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)340
    SettingDelhi, late 1980s, with excursions into its history
    AwardsThomas Cook Travel Book Award 1994

    Themes

    • Layers of history
    • Partition memory
    • Sufi and Mughal Delhi
    • Eccentric characters
    • Urban change

    Who should read it

    Travellers and armchair historians who want a witty, personal guide to Delhi's past and present.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Last Mughal
    • Delhi: A Novel
    • Twilight in Delhi

  • Wings of Fire

    Wings of Fire, published in 1999, tells the story of Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam up to the early 1990s. It begins in Rameswaram, the island temple town where his father owned boats and was close friends with the local priest, and where young Kalam sold newspapers to help the family. Teachers who saw his promise, and his studies of aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, set his direction.

    Most of the book covers his professional life: early work on hovercraft, then the Indian Space Research Organisation under Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan, where he led the SLV-3 satellite launch vehicle project, and later the Defence Research and Development Organisation's integrated guided missile programme that produced Prithvi and Agni. Failures, test explosions and team struggles are described alongside the successes.

    Co-written with his colleague Arun Tiwari, the book is plain in style and generous in crediting mentors and co-workers. It became one of the best-selling Indian memoirs, especially among students, because it presents science, hard work and faith as a route out of humble circumstances. Kalam later served as President of India from 2002 to 2007.

    Book details

    AuthorA. P. J. Abdul Kalam
    First published1999
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)180
    SettingRameswaram, Madras, Thumba, Sriharikota and Hyderabad, 1930s to 1990s

    Themes

    • Perseverance
    • Mentorship
    • Self-reliance in technology
    • Humble beginnings
    • Leadership

    Who should read it

    Students and young professionals looking for an inspiring, true story of science and service.

    If you liked this, try

    • Ignited Minds
    • My Journey
    • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

  • Sister of My Heart

    Anju and Sudha are born on the same night into the Chatterjee household in Calcutta, on the day their fathers disappeared on a mysterious expedition. Raised together by three widowed women in a decaying mansion, they are closer than sisters, though they could not be more different: Anju is bookish and outspoken, Sudha beautiful and romantic.

    As they grow up, a family secret about Sudha's father threatens their bond, and arranged marriages pull them apart. Sudha marries into a traditional family in a provincial town ruled by a domineering mother-in-law, while Anju moves to California with her husband and struggles with the loneliness of immigrant life.

    Told in alternating voices, the novel draws on Bengali folk tales and explores female friendship, the pressures on women to produce sons and the different trap each life presents. Its sequel, The Vine of Desire, continues the cousins' story. It suits readers who enjoy emotional, character-driven stories of women's lives across continents.

    Book details

    AuthorChitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    First published1999
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)322
    SettingCalcutta, a town in Bengal and California, 1970s to 1990s

    Themes

    • Female friendship
    • Arranged marriage
    • Family secrets
    • Immigration
    • Motherhood

    Who should read it

    Readers who love stories of sisterhood and women navigating tradition and choice.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Palace of Illusions
    • The Namesake
    • Clear Light of Day

  • Cuckold

    The narrator is the Maharaj Kumar, heir to the throne of Mewar in Rajasthan in the early 1500s. His new wife, a young princess, declares that she is already married to the god Krishna and spends her days singing devotional songs. The prince is publicly mocked as a man cuckolded by a god, and he is privately consumed by jealousy, curiosity and an odd tenderness.

    Alongside the marriage, the prince deals with palace intrigue among his father Rana Sanga's many wives and sons, invents new military tactics and administrative reforms, and watches the rise of Babur in the north. His voice is modern in its scepticism and wit, making the historical setting feel startlingly immediate.

    Kiran Nagarkar's novel reimagines the life of the husband of the poet-saint Mirabai, a figure history barely records. Long and richly detailed, it won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001 and is admired for turning legend into a psychological drama about faith, power and love.

    Book details

    AuthorKiran Nagarkar
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)610
    SettingChittor and the kingdom of Mewar, Rajasthan, early 16th century
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 2001

    Themes

    • Devotion and desire
    • Jealousy
    • Statecraft and war
    • Masculinity
    • Faith

    Who should read it

    Readers who like intelligent historical fiction told by a witty, troubled narrator.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Palace of Illusions
    • Delhi: A Novel
    • Wolf Hall

  • Delhi: A Novel

    The present-day narrator is a cynical, womanising Sikh journalist and tour guide who loves Delhi the way he loves Bhagmati, a hijra he met near a mosque: helplessly and against all advice. His episodes, set in the 1970s and 1980s, are earthy and comic, full of the city's ruins, bureaucrats and visiting foreigners.

    Between them, Khushwant Singh hands the stage to people from Delhi's past: a Hindu cast out by his community in the 13th century, the poet Amir Khusrau, Timur, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, the Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir, an Englishman and others caught in the 1857 uprising, a man present at the building of New Delhi, and finally participants in Partition and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

    The book took Singh about twenty-five years to write and reflects his love of history and his irreverence. Its frank sexuality divided reviewers, but its scope makes it a lively, if unorthodox, biography of a city repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. Readers who prefer restraint may find it excessive, but it is never dull.

    Book details

    AuthorKhushwant Singh
    First published1990
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)391
    SettingDelhi across six centuries, from the Delhi Sultanate to 1984

    Themes

    • History of delhi
    • Power and conquest
    • Desire
    • Religious conflict
    • The city as character

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy irreverent historical fiction and want a tour of Delhi through the centuries.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
    • Train to Pakistan
    • City of Djinns

  • Such a Long Journey

    Gustad Noble is a decent, proud bank clerk living with his wife Dilnavaz and three children in the Khodadad Building, a Parsi apartment block in Bombay. In 1971 a letter arrives from Major Jimmy Bilimoria, a friend who vanished years earlier, asking Gustad to deposit a large sum of money on behalf of a secret government operation linked to the coming war over East Pakistan.

    As Gustad tries to do his duty, his household is fraying: his eldest son Sohrab refuses the IIT place his father dreamed of, his daughter falls ill, and Dilnavaz turns to a neighbour's spells for help. Around them the building's eccentrics, including a pavement artist who paints gods on a wall, give the novel warmth and comedy.

    Mistry's first novel draws on the real Nagarwala bank fraud case and is affectionate about Parsi Bombay while sceptical of power. It won the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book and was shortlisted for the Booker; a film version appeared in 1998.

    Book details

    AuthorRohinton Mistry
    First published1991
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)339
    SettingKhodadad Building, Bombay, 1971
    AwardsGovernor General's Award 1991, Commonwealth Writers' Prize 1992

    Themes

    • Fathers and sons
    • Friendship and betrayal
    • Political corruption
    • Parsi community
    • Faith

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy warm, character-rich domestic novels with a political mystery underneath.

    If you liked this, try

    • A Fine Balance
    • Family Matters
    • A Suitable Boy

  • A Fine Balance

    In 1975, in an unnamed seaside city that is clearly Bombay, Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow determined not to depend on her brother, takes in work from an export firm. She hires two tailors, Ishvar Darji and his nephew Om, who have fled caste violence in their village, and rents a room to Maneck Kohlah, a student from a hill town whose family store is losing out to development.

    Mistry gives each character a long backstory, from the Chamaar family that defied caste by becoming tailors to Maneck's mountain childhood, before bringing them together in Dina's flat. As Indira Gandhi's Emergency unfolds, slum demolitions, forced sterilisation drives, bonded labour and petty officials press in from outside, and their fragile household is tested again and again.

    This is a big, compassionate novel about friendship and dignity under crushing systems, written in clear, unshowy prose. It won the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. Its emotional force is famous, and readers should be prepared for hardship.

    Book details

    AuthorRohinton Mistry
    First published1995
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)603
    SettingAn unnamed city by the sea (Bombay) and rural north India, 1940s to 1984, mainly 1975 to 1977
    AwardsGiller Prize 1995, Commonwealth Writers' Prize 1996

    Themes

    • The emergency
    • Caste oppression
    • Friendship
    • Poverty
    • Resilience

    Who should read it

    Readers who want an absorbing, humane epic about ordinary people living through India's Emergency.

    If you liked this, try

    • The God of Small Things
    • Such a Long Journey
    • The White Tiger

  • A Suitable Boy

    Mrs Rupa Mehra has one aim as the novel opens in 1951: to find a suitable husband for her younger daughter Lata, a university student in the fictional Gangetic city of Brahmpur. Lata, thoughtful and wary of being managed, finds herself weighing three very different men, a charming Muslim classmate, a famous poet and a hard-working shoe-company manager.

    Around this courtship Vikram Seth builds a panoramic portrait of four families, the Mehras, Kapoors, Khans and Chatterjis, during India's first general election. Subplots follow the abolition of zamindari estates, a riot at a temple-mosque site, the leather and shoe trade, a courtesan's music, and a minister's wayward son, so politics and private life constantly brush against each other.

    At nearly 1,400 pages it is one of the longest single-volume novels in English, yet it reads easily, in clear, gently ironic prose with nineteenth-century patience. It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award, and was adapted for BBC television by Mira Nair in 2020.

    Book details

    AuthorVikram Seth
    First published1993
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)1349
    SettingBrahmpur (fictional), Calcutta and Delhi, 1951 to 1952
    AwardsCommonwealth Writers' Prize 1994, WH Smith Literary Award 1994

    Themes

    • Arranged marriage
    • Post-independence politics
    • Hindu-muslim relations
    • Family duty
    • Choice and freedom

    Who should read it

    Readers who love long, immersive family novels in the tradition of Tolstoy and Austen, set in early independent India.

    If you liked this, try

    • Midnight's Children
    • Middlemarch
    • Such a Long Journey

  • Interpreter of Maladies

    Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection gathers nine stories that move between Boston-area suburbs and Calcutta. In the opening story a young couple, estranged after a stillbirth, use nightly power cuts to confess things they have kept from each other. In the title piece, a tour guide who translates patients' symptoms for a doctor is unsettled when an American-born tourist confides a secret to him.

    Other stories follow a Bengali girl in 1971 who watches a family friend from Dhaka follow news of the Bangladesh war, a Calcutta stairwell sweeper whose stories nobody believes, a lonely academic's wife who cannot learn to drive, and a young man settling into a Cambridge rooming house run by a century-old landlady.

    The writing is restrained and exact, and the drama lies in what characters notice and fail to say. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, an unusual honour for a first collection, along with the PEN/Hemingway Award, and it is widely taught as a model of the modern short story.

    Book details

    AuthorJhumpa Lahiri
    First published1999
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)198
    SettingBoston area, New Jersey, Calcutta and Orissa, 1970s to 1990s
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction 2000, PEN/Hemingway Award 1999

    Themes

    • Marriage and estrangement
    • Displacement
    • Communication
    • Loneliness
    • Cultural translation

    Who should read it

    Readers who appreciate subtle, perfectly made short fiction about emotional distance and belonging.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Namesake
    • Malgudi Days
    • Unaccustomed Earth