Introducing India

At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations.The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive.A masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists.EndorsementsA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2008A Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2008A Washington Post Best Book of 2008An Economist Best Book of 2008A New York Best Book of 2008A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of 2008A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.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 the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

India, 1992. The country is ablaze with riots. In Lucknow, ten-year-old Shubhankar witnesses a terrible act of mob violence that will alter the course of his life - one to which his family turn a blind eye.As he approaches adulthood, Shabby focuses on the only path he believes will buy him an escape: good school, good degree, good job, good car. But when he arrives in Mumbai in his twenties, he begins to question whether there might be other roads he could choose. His new friends, Syed and Shruti, are asking the same questions; together, buoyed by the freedom of the big city, they are rewriting their stories.But as the rising tide of nationalism sweeps across the country, and their friendship becomes the rock they all cling to, this new life suddenly seems fragile. And before Shabby can chart his way forward, he must reckon with the ghosts of his past...Dazzling and deeply moving, One Small Voice is a novel of modern India: of violence and prejudice, friendship and loyalty, community and tradition, and of a young man coming of age in a country on fire.

This is the extraordinary story of a child conceived in a wild monsoon night, a boy destined to be an outsider, a man with many names and no name.Born into luxury but disinherited and cast out onto the streets of Agra, Pran Nath must become a chameleon. Chasing his fortune, he will travel from the red light district of Bombay to the green lawns of England to the unmapped African wilderness. He will play many different roles — a young prize in a brothel, the adopted son of Scottish missionaries, the impeccably educated young Englishman headed for Oxford — in order to find the role that will finally fit.Daring and riotously inventive, The Impressionist is an odyssey of self-discovery: a tale of the many lives one man can live and of the universal search for true identity.Discover Hari Kunzru's smash-hit debut novel

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.EndorsementsWinner of the Booker Prize and Best of the Booker PrizeBBC Between the Covers Big Jubilee Read pick'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' — Guardian

A novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworldEndorsements'A literary masterpiece... at once erudite and intimate, reflective and funny... it has the grit and pace of a thriller' — Daily Telegraph'A publishing phenomenon' — Sunday Times'A gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga' — Daily Mail'In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower... At once a high-kicking, eye-gouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.' — Time Out

'They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.'This is the story of Rahel and Estha, twins growing up among the banana vats and peppercorns of their blind grandmother's factory, and amid scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. Armed only with the innocence of youth, they fashion a childhood in the shade of the wreck that is their family: their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher) and their sworn enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun, incumbent grand-aunt).A story anchored to anguish but fuelled by wit and magic.EndorsementsBooker Prize-winning novel.

A modern classic, this epic tale of families, romance and political intrigue, set in India, never loses its power to delight and enchant readers.At its core, A Suitable Boy is a love story: the tale of Lata — and her mother's — attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. At the same time, it is the story of India, newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great general election and the chance to map its own destiny.The international bestseller and modern classic: now a major TV series. One of the BBC's 100 novels that shaped our world.Endorsements'A phenomenon, a prodigy, a marvel' — Evening StandardSeth is the best writer of his generation — The Times'Fiction on a grand scale. By the time you reach the last page you will have absorbed a splendid story, full of the tangle and perfume of India' — Sunday Telegraph'The greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart' — Observer'You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life' — The Times

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning — and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch — known as Big Ammachi — will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years. Endorsements Oprah's Book Club selection. "One of the best books I've read in my entire life. It's epic. It's transportive... It was unputdownable!" — Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another twelve years, and a second time spent in India, before A Passage to India, E. M. Forster's great work of literature is published. During these years, Morgan will come to a profound understanding of himself as a man and of the infinite subtleties and complexities of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in his remarkable novel. At once a fictional exploration of the life and times of one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process, Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece by one of the finest writers of his generation.

The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother's house for as long as he could remember, 'beheld but not noticed, as angels are in a frieze of mortal strugglers'. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo-frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India's fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby's pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront.The years 1939-45 might be the most revered, deplored and replayed in modern history. Yet India's extraordinary role has been concealed, from itself and from the world. In riveting prose, Karnad retrieves the story of a single family — a story of love, rebellion, loyalty and uncertainty — and with it, the greater revelation that is India's Second World War. Farthest Field narrates the lost epic of India's war, in which the largest volunteer army in history fought for the British Empire, even as its countrymen fought to be free of it. It carries us from Madras to Peshawar, Egypt to Burma — unfolding the saga of a young family amazed by their swiftly changing world, and swept up in its violence.Endorsements'This book tells us that we all have two when we die and when we are forgotten. But there is also a possibility of two births, the second being recreated in an extraordinary book. This is one of those rare and extraordinary books which bring people alive again. It has been written with imagination and is engrossing to read' — Michael Holroyd

In a one-bedroom hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, during the last decades of the twentieth century, four love-battered Mendeses lived: mother, father, son and daughter. Between Em, the mother—who was frequently driven to the hospital after her failed suicide attempts—and The Big Hoom, the father—who tried to hold things together as best he could—they tried to be a family.

In Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, Pankaj Mishra captures an India which has shrugged off its sleepy, socialist air, and has become instead kitschy, clamorous and ostentatious. From a convent-educated beauty pageant aspirant to small shopkeepers planning their vacation in London, Pankaj Mishra paints a vivid picture of a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity. An absolute classic, this is a witty and insightful account of India's aspirational middle class.

High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals.The cook's heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home.Around the house swirl the forces of revolution and change. Civil unrest is making itself felt, stirring up inner conflicts as powerful as those dividing the community, pitting the past against the present, nationalism against love, a small place against the troubles of a big world.Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, was educated in India, England and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.EndorsementsWinner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction."A magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and political acuteness" — Hermione Lee, chair of the Man Booker Prize judges"Poised, elegant and assured... breaks out into extraordinary beauty" — The Times"Desai's bold, original voice and her ability to deal in grand narratives with a deft comic touch that affectionately recalls some of the masters of Indian fiction make hers a novel to reread and remember" — Independent

All of Habba Galli, Shivajinagar, is disturbed when eccentric Dondi Pais empties her double-barrelled shotgun to scatter a pack of noisy mongrels on Karwa Chauth night. But their distress turns to shock the next morning when it is discovered that one stray bullet has ploughed into the skull of a sour, spiteful jeweller, leaving him quite definitely dead.The more devout residents immediately recall how, the previous afternoon, the jeweller's wife of thirty years had broken her fast well before the appearance of the sacred Karwa Chauth moon. 'Aiyyo,' they whisper, 'she's gone and angered the Goddess!'But several mere mortals have motives too — including rising Bollywood star Haider Sait, back in Shivajinagar to visit his widowed mother and still eager to charm Habba Galli hottie Jhoomar Rao, now newly poor, newly single and a veterinary surgeon.By a happy coincidence, ACP Bhavani Singh is on hand to investigate. But as corpses start piling up in the bustling bazaar, will the canny old policeman be able to prove his powerful hunch — that these deaths are not accidents, or by the hand of the Goddess, but a sinister case of the most meticulous murders?

Over the last three decades, Kashmir has been ravaged by insurgency. While reams have been written on it — in human rights documents, academic theses, non-fiction accounts of the turmoil, and government and military reports — the effects of the violence on its inhabitants have rarely been rendered in fiction. Feroz Rather's The Night of Broken Glass corrects that anomaly. Through a series of interconnected stories, within which the same characters move in and out, the author weaves a tapestry of the horror Kashmir has come to represent. His visceral imagery explores the psychological impact of the turmoil on its natives — Showkat, who is made to wipe off graffiti on the wall of his shop with his tongue; Rosy, a progressive, jeans-wearing 'upper-caste' girl who is in love with 'lower-caste' Jamshid; Jamshid's father, Gulam, a cobbler by profession who never finds his son's bullet-riddled body; the ineffectual Nadim 'Pasture', who proclaims himself a full-fledged rebel; even the barbaric and tyrannical Major S, who has to contend with his own nightmares. Grappling with a society brutalized by the oppression of the state and fissured by the tensions of caste and gender, Feroz Rather's remarkable debut is as much a paean to the beauty of Kashmir and the courage of its people as it is a dirge to a paradise lost.

…the future of India may lie in unexpected hands.1940, Shimla, British India. Nalini Mistry longs for a life outside of the four walls of her home; reality, however, is different.Nalini and her two older sisters—Noor and Afreen—run the Royal Hotel Shimla, an opulent establishment that serves British high society. But when an underground revolutionary group asks them to aid a murderous conspiracy during the hotel’s Summer Jubilee Ball, they find themselves thrust headfirst into a dangerous game of lies. It doesn’t help that Nalini finds herself falling for Charles Nayler, a British officer, a man who sees her like nobody else.As the night of the ball approaches, the sisters are drawn into a web of hidden agendas, shifting alliances, and impossible choices—where nothing is what it seems, and the price of freedom may be everything.A Shimla Affair follows the story of three women attempting to change the course of Indian independence—for love, duty, and revenge.

An act of compassion puts a trapeze artist in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power in His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light by Dalit writer Mimi Mondal.I am not a fighter. I am a trapeze master.

Most expectant mothers talk to their unborn children. But what if the unborn start to respond?Mahika is hoping that a baby will breathe new life into her dead marriage. But all her pregnancies meet the same fate, because no baby is perfect for Shivam, her genius geneticist husband. Until there is one. Rudra, the world’s first genetically altered foetus, is Shivam’s perfect creation and Mahika’s last hope.Six weeks pregnant, Mahika has just walked into her fertility clinic when she discovers an anonymous note that discloses the ugly truth behind her pregnancy. Before Mahika can come to terms with the fact that her husband’s quest for perfection has marked its territory in her womb, she finds herself locked in her own house. But then she discovers that her unborn son has extraordinary powers. As weeks pass, Rudra calibrates and recalibrates his powers with one aim — Mahika’s freedom.But Rudra needs more than his newly acquired powers to free his mother. He needs to betray his creator, his father. And he must do it before it’s too late.

At Valorhouse International, an elite boarding school shrouded in the mist-drenched hills of Sikkim, secrets don’t stay buried. They fester.A boy goes missing. When a chilling confession crackles through the school’s underground radio, a witness swears they saw the missing boy return the night he vanished—the campus erupts in paranoia. Was it a hoax? A ghost story? Or something far more dangerous?For Angad Sandhu, a freshman hungry for recognition, this is his chance to resurrect the forgotten radio club and uncover the truth. But as he and a ragtag crew of outcasts peel back the lies, they awaken something dark, hungry and vengeful.Strange whispers echo in empty halls. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Students start vanishing—first in secret, then in plain sight.The deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes: Valorhouse doesn’t want its secrets found. And if Angad isn’t careful, he’ll be the next to disappear.The truth is out there. But will it kill them first?

Timira Leia Marak, a PR consultant from India, finds herself in a real-life K-drama when she lands in Seoul for a new job and meets handsome chaebol heir Baek Haneul who, as fate would have it, happens to be her new employer. Against her better judgment, Timira finds herself drawn to Haneul, with whom she seems to share a connection deeper than she can fathom.But many complications abound. Firstly, there's the matter of Timira’s ex-boyfriend Rodrigo, a Japanese-Brazilian superstar who signs up to play for a Korean football club. Then there's the beautiful heiress Ri Mina, key to Haneul’s future—who is also his fiancée. And that's only the beginning . . . Caught between the intensity of their feelings and the constraints that keep them apart, can Timira and Haneul even hope for their own chance at happily ever after?Set against the backdrop of Korean pop culture, You Had Me at Annyeong is a humorous and heartwarming cross-cultural romance and a delightful love letter from India to Korea.

A prominent movie producer, Rajat Rai Handa, is found murdered in his posh Mumbai apartment, and three people have confessed to the crime.They are his wife, Lipika Handa; his opportunistic childhood friend, Jatin Maini; and his business partner, the financial wiz Vidit Kapoor.But why have three people confessed to the crime?Inspector Vijay Waghmare follows the clues, while a pesky, ambitious reporter, Anirban Chatterjee, follows him and enthusiastically tries to meddle.A story of deceit, cunning, and vile human tactics, where ambition knows no bounds and survival is the only instinct.A trap is set, but will the killer be ensnared? And what is the price one is willing to pay for exacting revenge?Told through shifting perspectives and without an author’s voice, this story lets the characters take control, each with their own truth, bias, and secrets.But someone’s lying. Maybe all of them are.One murder. Three confessions.

In spare and lucid lines of poetry and prose, How to Forget takes the reader on a walk through childhood, love, loss and longing. Told through memory and impressions both personal and communal, the book chronicles lifetimes through the act of walking.These journeys often follow the same paths but end in unexpected conclusions. An elephant wanders through tea estates in the Nilgiris, a woman confronts the night, prawns are tossed in chilli oil, a childhood is lost and solitude is found in fifty-five walks across cities and timelines.With gentle and insightful observations, Ganapathi offers soothing respite from the chaos of our cities and the clamour of our thoughts.

What if you came face to face with the King of the Gods?Phones stop working. Smartwatches die out. Arms start glowing with blue scars.Training begins the very next day for Aman Chandra and ten other Souls of Samsara, who are kidnapped from modern-day India and transported to a hidden valley in the Himalayas.In this realm of magic, home to Hindu gods, immortal yogis and mythical beasts, the mission is clear for the Souls of Samsara: to learn the ancient art of yogic sorcery and prepare within one year for a treacherous journey not many can survive.But why must they go on this journey? How are the gods connected to it all?Before they get any answers, the Souls of Samsara realize that there is a larger scheme at play. The king of the gods has passed a controversial order. Aman must make a tough decision that will change not just his life but the fate of an entire nation...

In the snowy mountains of Vermont, Sonia is lonely. A college student and aspiring writer homesick for India, she turns to an older artist for inspiration and intimacy, a man who will cast a dark spell on the next many years of her life. In Brooklyn, Sunny is lonely, too. A struggling journalist originally from Delhi, he is both beguiled and perplexed by his American girlfriend and the country in which he plans to find his future. As Sonia and Sunny each become more and more alienated, they begin to question their understanding of happiness, human connection, and where they belong.Back in India, Sonia and Sunny's extended families cannot fathom how anyone could be lonely in this great, bustling world. They arrange a meeting between the two—a clumsy meddling that only drives Sonia and Sunny apart before they have a chance to fall in love.The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next.The spellbinding story of two young people whose fates will intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity. Behind every love story are the myriad stories of two families. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas.EndorsementsBooker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss

"[Quarterlife is] by a distance the best debut of the year." —Sam Sacks, Wall Street JournalIndia’s literary novel of the year—an enthralling, award-winning debut from a “blazingly original voice” (Vauhini Vara).“In the fashion of the big novels by Salman Rushdie or Amitav Gosh” (Biblio), Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age. When the Bharat Party comes to power after a divisive election, Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai. With him is Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to embody her ideals through a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum. Meanwhile, Naren’s charismatic brother Rohit, an amateur filmmaker, sets out to explore his roots and befriends the fiery young men of the Hindu nationalist machine. Their journeys lead them into an astonishing milieu of brutal debates and infatuations as fraught as they are addictive, feeding into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets—where the simmering unrest erupts. Hailed as “a landmark novel” (Indian Express), Quarterlife is a brilliantly innovative work that tests the limits of what the novel can achieve.

From the award-winning author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes a stunning historical novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows two outsiders—an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer—as they venture into a forbidden kingdom.1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rapidly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians—permitted to cross borders that white men may not—to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet.Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: after years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What's more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape.

After discovering she’s lesbian and dyslexic at twenty, Vaishali begins to untangle her anxieties around reading and writing. She comes out to her mother at twenty-two and leaves her Bombay home to make her own way. In a dingy, insect-ridden yet rent-free hostel room in Hyderabad with a door that doesn’t quite close, she tries to make the best of the situation by writing a book about her experiences. As she writes, she finds the past has a way of catching up with her, even as she explores her dyslexia, her homosexuality, and the clitoris; falls in love and recovers from a harrowing breakup; faces academic failure, loneliness, and homophobia; and lives with sickness, anxiety, depression, and the realities of caste, gender, and body. This is the story of Vaishali's relationship with her many truths and the truths of many young people in India.

When in love, you tend to take each other for granted, and sometimes that can cost you a lifetime of togetherness...Ronnie knew that his first crush was way out of his league, and yet he pursued and wooed Adira. At first he was shy and kept his distance, becoming more persuasive later. He couldn't believe it when the beautiful Adira actually began to reciprocate, falling in love with him for his simplicity and honesty.Slowly, as they grow close and comfortable with each other, life takes on another hue. What was once truly magical becomes routine. There are fights and then make-up sessions—a clash of egos and doubts.Things begin to change for the worse.It is too late.Ronnie and Adira will probably never find their forever after...

The Prophecies foretell the reawakening of the terrible rakshas, Danh-Gem, and the arrival of a hero to face him. But heroes do not appear magically out of nowhere; they have to be found and trained. And sometimes the makers of prophecies don't know everything they need to know ...As the day of Danh-Gem's rising draws closer and the chosen hero is sent on a quest, another young man learns of terrible things he must do in secret and the difficult choices he must make in order to save the world from the rakshas.Drawn from a variety of sources ranging from Greek and Indian epics to spy novels, fairy tales to superhero comics, the Simoqin Prophecies is a tale marked by meticulous plotting and artful storytelling - a page-turner sure to grip you from start to finish.