Contemporary fiction books from India
Recommended contemporary fiction books (21)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into contemporary fiction here are some contemporary fiction books from India for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman EN
Description:
In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.
2.
All This Could Be Different : A Novel by Sarah Thankam Mathews EN
Description:
2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick “One of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” —Vogue “Dazzling and wholly original...[written] with such mordant wit, insight, and specificity, it feels like watching a new literary star being born in real time.” –Entertainment Weekly From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America Graduating into the... continue
3.
Description:
A riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant novel from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation. Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden acc... continue
4.
Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga EN
Description:
Welcome to Kittur, India. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in "Between the Assassinations" are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads between the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and the prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed. A series of sketches that together form a blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, "Between the Assassinations," with all the humor, sympathy, a... continue
6.
Description:
THE JANUARY 2022 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK “In the way A Thousand Splendid Suns told of Afghanistan’s women, Thrity Umrigar tells a story of India with the intimacy of one who knows the many facets of a land both modern and ancient, awash in contradictions.” —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide. Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, b... continue
7.
Love After Marriage by Bhagya Chandra EN
Description:
Revised and re-edited, September 2014 Compassionate and deeply emotional, 'Love after Marriage' is a contemporary love story about Deepak and Roshni, a young couple flung together in a traditional arranged marriage. The story authenticates the concept of an arranged marriage, which has prevailed in India for several hundred years. It centers on the conviction that husband and wife, strangers at the time of marriage, can develop a stronger love if they are honest and committed to each other. In Love after Marriage, Deepak and Roshni embark on the timeless journey of marriage, only to discover t... continue
8.
Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan EN
Description:
Four gems, with new introductions, mark acclaimed Indian writer R. K. Narayan's centennial Introducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India "the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story." Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan's imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human experience. This edition includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize- winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. For more than s... continue
9.
Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments by Hema Sukumar EN
Description:
A warm-hearted debut novel set in the beautiful coastal city of Chennai, for fans of Alexander McCall Smith, Joanna Nell and Graeme Simsion. Grand Life Apartments is a middle-class apartment block surrounded by lush gardens in the coastal city of Chennai, India. It is the home of Kamala, a pious, soon-to-be retired dentist who spends her days counting down to the annual visits from her daughter who is studying in the UK. Her neighbour, Revathi, is a thirty-two-year-old engineer who is frequently reminded by her mother that she has reached her expiry date in the arranged marriage market. Jason,... continue
10.
Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar EN
Description:
A surgeon must bring a dead family back to life in this fabulist debut novel set in rural India, called “otherworldly” and “a haunting contemplation of life, death, the liminal space in between, and the dogged search for resurrection” (Kirkus Reviews, starred). Fleeing scandal in the city, a surgeon accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work. But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery,... continue