Editor’s Note:  Reference Librarian, Gowri Ravindranath, at the American Consulate in Chennai, India, responded to my request for current works of fiction and nonfiction that might help American readers better understand today’s India. NAPE readers who obtain much of their reading material through the National Library Service for the Blind will find that the collection of books available about India is quite dated and while it is useful and interesting, most titles end with the demise of British control in India in 1947. This list is offered to NAPE readers who may wish to understand more about this emerging power in our world. We are grateful to Gowri Ravindranath for preparing the list.

Non-Fiction

A Concise History of India

by Barbara D. Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press, 2001

“With an informative, scholarly text enhanced with illustrations and quotations... recommended for academic reading lists and reference collections as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in understanding India's contemporary political and economic relationships with the community of nations...” Library Bookwatch

India: Emerging Power

by Stephen Philip Cohen, Brookings Institution Press, 2002

“A must for all who want to understand India's emerging place in the region and the world” - Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. Ambassador to India

India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond

by Shashi Tharoor, Arcade Publishing, 2006

“At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, a new nation was born. It has 17 major languages and 22,000 distinct dialects. It has over a billion individuals of every ethnic extraction known to humanity…. Shashi Tharoor’s India is a fascinating portrait of one of the world’s most interesting countries, its politics, its mentality, and its cultural riches. But it is also an eloquent argument for the importance of India to the future of America and the industrialized world. With the energy and erudition that distinguished his prize-winning novels, Tharoor points out that Indians account for a sixth of the world’s population and their choices will resonate throughout the globe.” – Amazon.com

India: A Wounded Civilization

by V.S. Naipaul, Vintage, 2003

“Typical Naipaul–brilliantly lucid, terse, with something hardbitten yet resigned in the emotional background.” – The New York Times Book Review

India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha, Ecco, 2007

“A political narrative of India's six decades of independence, Guha's history emphasizes how the country has remained a mostly territorially intact and constitutional state, despite the expectations of many after the Union Jack was lowered in 1947. An able and readable scholar, Guha proceeds chronologically from the violence-wracked partition of that year to the present, when elections became “indigenized,” as did another support to democracy, India's professional, apolitical military. Guha's history, though, is not an uncritical paean to his country. It covers political complexities revolving around caste, language, class, and religion. Instances of conflict arising from their frictions, as in India's contest with Pakistan over Kashmir, illustrate the centrifugal problems with which India's modern founders had to cope. Although the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is necessarily prominent in Guha's treatment, Guha does not neglect less-famous historical actors, such as home minister Vallabhbhai Patel in the late 1940s, who also set India on course for a democracy that functions, despite imperfections and corruption. A fluent, judicious modern history for general interest.” - Taylor, Gilbert, Booklist

India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse Is Redefining Global Business

by Rafiq Dossani, AMACOM/American Management Association, 2007

“Once the jewel in the crown of the formidable British Empire, India has been surrounded by myth for years. After gaining independence in 1947, this often misunderstood country found itself faced with a new sense of freedom -- and along with it, enormous burdens and challenges. … Honest and revelatory, India Arriving provides a deeper understanding of a country that promises to be the next major player in the world economy.” – Amazon.com

India in Slow Motion

by Gilllian Wright and Mark Tully, Penguin Books India, 2004

“In everything he writes, Tully’s sympathy for and knowledge of India shines through… He is, indeed, incomparable among foreign observers of that bewildering, maddening, utterly enchanting medley of peoples” -Geoffrey Moorhouse, Guardian

In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India

by Edward Luce, Abacus, 2007

“Superb. . . . The blend of anecdote, history, and economic analysis makes In Spite of the Gods an endlessly fascinating, highly pleasurable way to catch up on a very big story.” - William Grimes, The New York Times

India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age

by Gurcharan Das, Anchor, 2002

“Insightful guide to a rapidly changing nation . . . Something tremendous is happening in India, and Das, with his keen eye and often elegant prose, has his finger firmly on the pulse of the transformation.” - The New York Times Book Review

The State of India's Democracy

by Sumit Ganguly, Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner (Editors),The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007

“The newest volume in the acclaimed Journal of Democracy series examines the state of India's democracy. As India marks its sixtieth year of independence, it has become an ever more important object of study for scholars of comparative democracy. It has long stood out as a remarkable exception to theories holding that low levels of economic development and high levels of social diversity pose formidable obstacles to the successful establishment and maintenance of democratic government.” - Amazon.com

Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond

By Pankaj Mishra, Picador, 2007

“Fascinating . . . Pankaj Mishra's travels are interwoven with pungent commentary on modern politics in South Asia. . . . This is not a gentle book, but it is a brave one.” –The New York Times Book Review

The World is Flat

by Thomas L. Friedman, Picador, 2007

“Captivating … an enthralling read. To his great credit, Friedman embraces much of his flat world's complexity, and his reporting brings to vibrant life some beguiling characters and trends, … The World is Flat is also more lively, provocative, and sophisticated than the overwhelming bulk of foreign policy commentary these days. We've no real idea how the twenty-first century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through.” - Warren Bass, The Washington Post

Fiction

The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas

by Paul Theroux, Houghton Mifflin, 2007

“The dismayed, disoriented American travelers in this trio of stereotype-shattering novellas from Theroux (following Blinding Light) lament the missing solemn pieties and virtuous peasants of the India they read about in novels.”

English, August: An Indian Story

by Upamanyu Chatterjee, New York Review Books Classics, 2006

“A best-seller when it was first published, in India in 1988, this satiric novel chronicles the reluctant coming of age of a privileged young man who has just entered the prestigious Indian Administrative Service. … Chatterjee's story is uniquely Indian, as he plumbs his hero's fear of being "just one more urban Indian bewitched by America's hard sell in the Third World.” -  The New Yorker

A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club)

by Rohinton Mistry, Vintage, 2001

“The setting of Mistry's quietly magnificent second novel (after the acclaimed Such a Long Journey) is India in 1975-76, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defying a court order calling for her resignation, declares a state of emergency and imprisons the parliamentary opposition as well as thousands of students, teachers, trade unionists and journalists. These events, along with the government's forced sterilization campaign, serve as backdrop for an intricate tale of four ordinary people struggling to survive.”  Publishers Weekly

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy, Flamingo, 1997

“... as subtle as it is powerful, a novel that is Faulknerian in its ambitious tackling of family and race and class, Dickensian in its sharp-eyed observation of society and character.” - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Book Review

Inheritance of Loss

by Kiran Desai, Grove Press, 2006

“Desai's second novel is set in the nineteen-eighties in the northeast corner of India, where the borders of several Himalayan states - Bhutan and Sikkim, Nepal and Tibet - meet. Briskly paced and sumptuously written, the novel ponders questions of nationhood, modernity, and class, in ways both moving and revelatory.” - The New Yorker

Interpreter of Maladies

by Jhumpa Lahiri, Houghton Mifflin, 2000

“…Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage.” – Amazon.com

Malgudi Days

by R. K. Narayan, Introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Penguin Classics, 2006 “India's great novelist presents “a gallery of colorful characters” in this collection of short stories set in the mythical village of Malgudi. LJ's reviewer found the tales "compelling miniature gems” From Library Journal. All books of R.K. Narayanan are recommended

Midnight's Children: A Novel

by Salman Rushdie, Random House, 2006

“Extraordinary . . . one of the most important novels to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation.” –The New York Review of Books

“The literary map of India is about to be redrawn. . . . Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice.” The New York Times

Naalukettu : The House Around the Courtyard

by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Gita Krishnankutty (Translator)

Oxford University Press, 2007

“Naalukettu: Stone Courtyard is the story of a young boy, Appunni, set in a matrilineal Nair joint family (a taravad) in the author's native village, Kudallur. Fascinated with accounts of the prestigious Naalukettu taravad from which his mother was expelled, Appunni visits the house only to be despised and rejected by all. Appunni grows up to earn enough money and returns to buy his ancestral home, but his victory soon turns into ashes when his father's murderer turns out to be the same man who was the only sympathetic adult in Appunni's lonely teenage years.” – Amazon Review

A Suitable Boy : A Novel

by Vikram Seth, Perennnial Classics, 2005

“Seth previously made a splash with his 1986 novel in verse, The Golden Gate. Here he abandons the compression of poetry to produce an enormous novel that will enthrall most readers; those who are fazed by a marathon read, however, may gasp for mercy. Set in the post-colonial India of the 1950s, this sprawling saga involves four families - the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Chatterjis and the Khans - whose domestic crises illuminate the historical and social events of the era. Like an old-fashioned soap opera (or a Bombay talkie), the multi-charactered plot pits mothers against daughters, fathers against sons, Hindus against Muslims and small farmers against greedy landowners facing government-ordered dispossession.”  Publishers Weekly