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Tag: Fiction

  • Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku

    The first book of the Ram Chandra Series begins with Ram's birth on the day his father Dashrath loses a battle to Raavan, a coincidence that makes the king and much of Ayodhya treat the boy as a bad omen. Raised in the shadow of that defeat, Ram grows into a serious young man devoted to law, convinced that society can only be saved by applying rules equally to everyone.

    Trained by the sage Vashishtha alongside his brothers Bharat, Lakshman and Shatrughan, Ram gains popularity by enforcing justice in the city, but palace politics lead to his fourteen-year exile with Lakshman and Sita. Amish presents Sita as a capable warrior and administrator, and their story unfolds alongside the growing threat of Raavan's Lanka.

    The book uses a multilinear structure, with later volumes following Sita and Raavan's paths up to the same moment. It brings the Shiva Trilogy's style to the Ramayana, debating ideas of governance and masculine and feminine ways of life. Readers expecting the devotional tone of traditional versions should know that Amish takes liberties with the source.

    Book details

    AuthorAmish Tripathi
    First published2015
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMythology
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)354
    SettingAyodhya, Mithila and the Dandakaranya forest, ancient India around 3400 BC

    Themes

    • Law and justice
    • Leadership
    • Exile
    • Duty
    • Governance

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a fresh, action-driven retelling of the Ramayana with a political edge.

  • The Palace of Illusions

    Draupadi, here called Panchaali, is born from a sacrificial fire as the answer to her father King Drupad's wish for vengeance. Growing up in Panchaal with her twin brother Dhri, she chafes against the limits placed on princesses and listens closely to the prophecy that she will change the course of history.

    Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni follows Panchaali through her swayamvar, her marriage to all five Pandava brothers, the building of the magical palace at Indraprastha, the humiliation of the dice game and long years of exile. Her complicated friendship with Krishna and her secret attraction to Karna, the Pandavas' greatest rival, give the familiar epic a fresh emotional centre.

    The novel is accessible to readers who do not know the Mahabharata, while those who do will notice how much the female perspective changes. It is a popular entry point to mythological retellings, praised for its lyrical voice and its proud, flawed heroine. Its palace becomes a fitting symbol of ambition.

    Book details

    AuthorChitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    First published2008
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMythology
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)360
    SettingPanchaal, Hastinapur, Indraprastha and Kurukshetra in the world of the Mahabharata

    Themes

    • Female perspective
    • Pride and revenge
    • Fate
    • Friendship
    • Desire

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a feminist, intimate retelling of the Mahabharata.

  • Clear Light of Day

    Tara, married to a diplomat and living abroad, returns with her family for a summer visit to the house in Old Delhi where she grew up. Her elder sister Bim still lives there, teaching history at a college and caring for their brother Baba, who has an intellectual disability and spends his days listening to old records.

    The novel moves back to the 1940s, when the siblings' parents were distant, an aunt raised them, and their brother Raja, a lover of Urdu poetry, fell ill and later left for Hyderabad to marry into a Muslim family. Bim has never quite forgiven him, and the story slowly uncovers how each sibling remembers those years differently.

    Anita Desai's prose is precise and luminous, alive to heat, gardens and the slow decay of a house. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1980, it is often regarded as her finest novel, a study of time, family loyalty and forgiveness set against the upheaval of 1947.

    Book details

    AuthorAnita Desai
    First published1980
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)183
    SettingOld Delhi, the 1940s and the 1970s

    Themes

    • Sisterhood
    • Memory and time
    • Forgiveness
    • Partition
    • Duty

    Who should read it

    Readers who appreciate introspective family novels with exquisite, atmospheric prose.

  • Fire on the Mountain

    After a lifetime as the dutiful wife of a university vice-chancellor and mother of many children, Nanda Kaul has retreated to Carignano, an isolated house on a ridge in Kasauli. She wants nothing more than to be left alone with the pines and the view, and she resents any letter or visitor that might pull her back into obligation.

    Then her great-granddaughter Raka is sent to recover from typhoid and a troubled home. To Nanda's surprise, the child wants no attention at all and spends her days roaming ravines and burnt hillsides. Nanda finds herself trying to win the girl over with invented stories, while Ila Das, a childhood friend reduced to poverty, brings news of the dangers of the world below.

    Short and intense, the novel is a study of solitude, female lives and the pretences people build to survive them. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award, and its quiet build-up gives way to a powerful, unsettling conclusion best discovered without warning.

    Book details

    AuthorAnita Desai
    First published1977
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)145
    SettingCarignano, a house in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, 1970s
    AwardsWinifred Holtby Memorial Prize 1978, Sahitya Akademi Award 1978

    Themes

    • Solitude
    • Women's lives
    • Old age and childhood
    • Illusion
    • Loneliness

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy short, psychologically intense novels about women and solitude.

  • 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.

  • Sacred Games

    Sartaj Singh is a divorced, middle-aged Sikh inspector in the Mumbai police, good at his job but going nowhere. An anonymous call leads him to a bunker-like house where the notorious gang lord Ganesh Gaitonde has holed up, and the confrontation leaves Sartaj with a set of questions that pull him into an investigation spanning intelligence agencies, gurus and terror networks.

    Alternating chapters are Gaitonde's own story, narrated in a swaggering voice as he rises from a petty smuggler to a criminal empire builder with links to politicians and Bollywood. Interludes, called Insets, step away to tell unrelated lives across the subcontinent, from Partition refugees to a Kashmiri agent.

    At around 900 pages, Vikram Chandra's novel is crime fiction on an epic scale, saturated with Bombay slang and the texture of the city's police stations, slums and film sets. It was adapted as India's first Netflix original series in 2018. Its sheer length is part of the experience.

    Book details

    AuthorVikram Chandra
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)900
    SettingMumbai, with episodes across India and abroad, 1940s to early 2000s

    Themes

    • Organised crime
    • Police corruption
    • Religious extremism
    • Masculinity
    • The city

    Who should read it

    Readers who love sprawling crime epics and want an inside view of Mumbai's underworld.

  • Shantaram

    Lin, an Australian heroin addict and armed robber, escapes from prison and flies to Bombay on a false passport in the early 1980s. A street guide named Prabaker befriends him, takes him to his home village, and helps him settle into a slum where Lin opens a free clinic for its residents and receives the name Shantaram.

    Lin falls for Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman in the expatriate crowd at Leopold's cafe, and is drawn into the circle of Abdel Khader Khan, a philosophical mafia boss. He works in currency black markets and passport forgery, survives a brutal stint in Arthur Road prison, and eventually joins a mission into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

    Gregory David Roberts drew on his own escape from an Australian prison and years in Bombay, although how much is literal remains debated. The book is long, emotional and full of aphorisms; many readers adore its love for the city, while others find it overwritten. An Apple TV+ series followed in 2022.

    Book details

    AuthorGregory David Roberts
    First published2003
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)933
    SettingBombay and a village in Maharashtra, and Afghanistan, 1980s

    Themes

    • Redemption
    • Exile and fugitive life
    • Love
    • Crime and morality
    • Friendship

    Who should read it

    Readers who want an immersive, romantic adventure through 1980s Bombay and don't mind length.

  • Five Point Someone

    Hari, the narrator, and his friends Ryan and Alok enter the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi expecting success, but they quickly sink to the bottom of the class with grade averages around five out of ten. Ryan, a confident rebel, argues that the system rewards rote learning over ideas, and the three spend more time on experiments, drinking and schemes than on assignments.

    Hari falls secretly for Neha, the daughter of the strict mechanical engineering head, Professor Cherian. Alok carries the weight of a poor family relying on him, and the trio's attempts to beat the system, including a dangerous plan involving a stolen exam paper, bring consequences that test their friendship.

    Chetan Bhagat's debut, written in simple conversational English, became a best-seller among young Indian readers who rarely bought novels. It loosely inspired the 2009 film 3 Idiots and turned its author into one of the most widely read and debated writers in India. Critics often dismissed it, which only fuelled its popularity.

    Book details

    AuthorChetan Bhagat
    First published2004
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHumour
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)270
    SettingIIT Delhi campus, late 1990s

    Themes

    • Academic pressure
    • Friendship
    • Education system
    • First love
    • Family expectations

    Who should read it

    Students and young readers who want an easy, funny campus story about surviving exam culture.

  • Coolie

    Munoo is fourteen when his uncle takes him from his Kangra hill village to work as a domestic servant for a bank clerk's family in the town of Sham Nagar. Mistreated by the clerk's wife, he runs away, and the novel becomes a picaresque journey through the working life of colonial India.

    He finds kindness and cruelty in turn: a pickle factory in Daulatpur, the docks and textile mills of Bombay, where he lives on the pavement and is caught up in a strike and communal riot, and finally Simla, where he pulls the rickshaw of an Anglo-Indian woman. Each place shows how class and poverty matter as much as caste, and how industrial capitalism uses up the bodies of the poor.

    Published in 1936, a year after Untouchable, Coolie is broader and angrier, shaped by Anand's socialist convictions. It is valued as one of the earliest Indian novels about the urban working class and child labour. Its ending is bleak, and Munoo's innocence makes the cruelty he meets all the more striking for modern readers.

    Book details

    AuthorMulk Raj Anand
    First published1936
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)282
    SettingKangra hills, Sham Nagar, Daulatpur, Bombay and Simla, 1930s

    Themes

    • Child labour
    • Class exploitation
    • Industrialisation
    • Poverty
    • Colonialism

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in social-realist fiction and the lives of India's colonial-era working poor.

  • Train to Pakistan

    Mano Majra is a small village on the Sutlej, with a railway bridge and a station whose train timings organise the day. Sikh farmers and Muslim tenants have lived together for generations, largely untouched by the politics of Partition. Then, in the summer of 1947, a ghost train arrives from Pakistan carrying the bodies of murdered Sikhs and Hindus.

    Khushwant Singh moves between a handful of characters: Juggut Singh, a hulking local thug in love with a Muslim weaver's daughter; Iqbal, an English-educated activist sent to rouse the peasants; and Hukum Chand, the district magistrate, a weary, compromised man who tries to manipulate events from his rest house. As refugees and armed groups arrive, the village is pushed toward retaliation.

    Written with unsentimental directness and dark humour, the novel was one of the first major works of fiction about Partition violence. Its manuscript won the Grove Press India Fiction Prize, and it was filmed by Pamela Rooks in 1998. It is brief enough to read in a sitting but lingers long afterwards.

    Book details

    AuthorKhushwant Singh
    First published1956
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)181
    SettingMano Majra, a village on the India-Pakistan border in Punjab, summer 1947
    AwardsGrove Press India Fiction Prize 1954

    Themes

    • Partition
    • Communal violence
    • Love across religion
    • Moral responsibility
    • Village life

    Who should read it

    Anyone wanting a short, unflinching novel about how Partition reached ordinary villages.