| List of Book Reviews |
| 1. Dadi Nani: Memories of Our Grandmothers |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Subhash Mathur and Subodh Mathur |
|
| This is an anthology of reminiscences written by the grandchildren of twenty five Indian women who were born near the beginning of the last century. It offers most genuine as well as insightful descriptions of love that spans generations. When taken as a whole, the stories painted a rich and complex portrait of the culture and socio-economic conditions that most of us don't know too well. |
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| 2. Unaccustomed Earth |
Amit Shankar Saha |
| by Jhumpa Lahiri |
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| This new collection of short stories has the span and thematic breadth of a novel, and yet each story is distinct and self-contained. In this book Lahiri delves into darker territories of family life caught in dislocated limbo. |
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| 3. The Inscrutable Americans |
Suseela Ravi |
| by Anurag Mathur |
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| If you are ever in the mood for a bellyful of laughter, this book which charts the course of a young man bumbling into a small University campus in America is for you. |
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| 4. Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in S. Asia |
Sudheer Apte |
| by P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P. Cohen |
|
| Written by three strategy experts on India, Pakistan, and U.S. policy
in South Asia respectively, "Four Crises and a Peace Process" examines
a series of bilateral India-Pakistan crises over the past two
decades, and the role of the United States in each of them. |
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| 5. Power of Full Engagement |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz |
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| This is a "how to" book which bridges the gap between our work and home lives. Balancing stress and recovery is critical when it comes to managing energy in all facets of our lives. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings. |
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| 6. Karma and Other Stories |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Rishi Reddi |
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| As someone who was not able to get all the hoopla about Jhumpa Lahiri, I am happy to report that here at last is an author whose writing is worthy of attention and accolades. |
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| 7. Sacred Games |
Niranjana Iyer |
| by Vikram Chandra |
|
| Sacred Games is storytelling at its very peak. Characters leap off the
page to punch one in the gut, the narrative keeps the reader panting
to know what happens next for every one of its 900 pages, and the
author's mastery of his subject -- nothing less than India itself --
makes the novel as redolent of the country as skinny-dipping into a
vat of hot sambhar. |
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| 8. Mixed |
Ashini Desai |
| by Chandra Prasad |
|
| To hear the voice of true multiculturalism is to listen to the words of “Mixed.” The authors in this anthology of short stories are multiracial; each author brings a unique blend of experiences and styles depending on their mix of races and nationalities. |
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| 9. Reading Lolita in Tehran |
Suseela Ravi |
| by Azar Nafisi |
|
| Some might try to diminish Nafisi’s observations as biased. Having had the privilege of studying in different countries before moving back to Tehran, experiencing first hand what freedom means and feeling its loss, she had a larger canvas to make the comparisons. One cannot but appreciate her courage in standing up for something that she believed in.
The way she analyses fiction is mesmerizing. A novel is not an allegory, she writes. “It’s the sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel; you inhale the experience,” she tells her students. Can anyone define it better? |
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| 10. An End to Suffering:
The Buddha in the World |
Namit Arora |
| by Pankaj Mishra |
|
| It would be no exaggeration to say that Mishra now idolizes the Buddha. Indeed, he approaches the Buddha like a smitten scholar. We search but do not find him investigating the limits, contradictions, and drawbacks of the Buddha's path, which surely exist in all chosen paths. Even in his own day, the Buddha faced reasoned skepticism from the Carvakas. But despite this imbalance - without which perhaps he might never have written this book - the most resonant part of Mishra's work remains his intellectual approach to the Buddha. He clarifies the core ideas of Buddhist metaphysics and finds in the Buddha a powerful contemporary relevance. |
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| 11. Hitchhiker |
Arun Chebium |
| by Vinod Joseph |
|
| This is debut author Vinod George Joseph’s ambitious attempt to examine caste and religion in the Indian milieu through the story of Ebenezer, a Hindu untouchable (Verumar) who, along with his family, has converted to Christianity in a bid to rid himself of his pariah-like status in society and remake himself socially and monetarily. |
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| 12. Two Lives |
Ashini Desai |
| by Vikram Seth |
|
| "Two Lives" is the memoir of his great-uncle, Dr. Shanti Seth and his wife Henny Caro Seth. Seth said he always knew his uncle’s life was a story worth telling, so he spent time interviewing his uncle and collecting material for this book. However, he acknowledges he pushed this project aside while he pursued his other writing endeavors. Thankfully, Seth did return to this project and finished this book. Now, after all these years, Henny and Shanti have come back to life. |
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| 13. The Real Revolution: The Global Story of American Independence |
Sujatha Sundar |
| by Marc Aronson |
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| "Globalization is not new," the book seems to say as, in the course of answering the "Why tea?" question, it brings to light the forces of globalization that existed over two centuries ago! Aronson offers a compelling new international portrait that describes an Enron-style global stock scandal that tied the fates of Virginia squires (like Jefferson and Washington), wealthy Scottish bankers and poor Bengali rice farmers. |
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| 14. Only the eyes are mine |
Heartcrossings |
| by Usha Alexander |
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| I was not sure what to make of the title when I started reading this book and maybe because of that incomprehension my expectations from this book were quite modest. I have to report that I was pleasantly surprised. Usha Alexander has an unusual story and tells it with grace and an impressive economy of words. She tells two very different yet interconnected stories and rarely if ever does the pace of either slacken. |
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| 15. The Inheritance of Loss |
Fatema Karim |
| by Kiran Desai |
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| Unlike most of her contemporaries, she explicitly juxtaposes the lives of rich and poor, attempting to fill what seems a puzzling gap in South Asian writing. Nevertheless, while a noble and absolutely worthwhile endeavor, the book is very much flawed. |
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| 16. Frangipani |
Heartcrossings |
| by Célestine Vaite |
|
| Most ethnic writers are faced with the challenge of telling a story set in an unfamiliar cultural landscape. While transporting the reader to an unfamiliar locale is very welcome, they must remain wary of not allowing zeitgeist to overtake their story. That would make them guilty of exoticism. Vaite manages to strike the right balance. It helps that her theme has universal appeal. |
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| 17. Noor |
Niranjana Iyer |
| by Sorayya Khan |
|
| Many Indians’ knowledge of the 1971 India-Pakistan war is confined to the
awareness of India’s victory; Noor is the story of the ‘other side’,
fleshing out the history we know, giving the event an urgent immediacy
thirty-five years after its end. Khan unsparingly describes the racism in which
much of the rationale for this war was rooted. -- Bengalis were deliberately
referred to in pejorative terms that devalued and dehumanized them, so as to
make the task of slaughter easier; when Noor asks Ali to relate a joke, he can
only recall the denigrating "Bengali jokes" in currency before the
war. Rape, torture, mass murder – Ali is guilty of each one of these crimes,
and the author does not shy away from detailing these scenes. |
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| 18. The Space Between Us |
Tara Menon |
| by Thrity Umrigar |
|
| This novel is a story of friendship, love, trust, and betrayal. Through the lives of two women from different spheres of society, Sera, an upper class Parsi, and Bhima, a poor Hindu woman from a Bombay slum, we view the tragic dimensions of life. |
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| 19. How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life |
Sujatha Sundar |
| by Kaavya Viswanathan |
|
| Debut author Kaavya Viswanathan (age - seventeen years) has penned a remarkable glimpse into the confused mind of a high-school Cinderella. It is at her parents’ behest that this Cinderella tries to deny her inner geek and morph into a party girl par excellence. |
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| 20. The Man Who Would Be King : The First American in Afghanistan |
Ruchira Paul |
| by Ben Macintyre |
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| In 1822, Harlan, an earnest young man of twenty two, robust in health and florid in his imagination, set out to seek a new life with nothing more at his disposal than a love of adventure, history (especially the exploits of Alexander the Great of Macedonia) and botany. His journey began in Philadelphia and landed him in Calcutta, India, by way of China in 1824. After being injured during battle in Burma, Harlan traveled to northwest India and Afghanistan, seeking to realize his fondest dream - to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. |
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| 21. The Inheritance of Loss |
Mary Whipple |
| by Kiran Desai |
|
| Kiran Desai writes an elegant and thoughtful study of families, the losses each member must confront alone, and the lies each tells himself/herself to make memories of the past more palatable. |
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| 22. Stolen Worlds |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Kavita Ivy Nandan |
|
| Stolen Worlds is a compilation of about twenty first-person accounts written by people of Indian origin who live or grew up in Fiji. The accounts are rich in historical detail, They describe the social and family structures, cultural touchstones, as well as the economic conditions. |
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| 23. Q&A |
Poornima Apte |
| by Vikas Swarup |
|
| Swarup who has a day job as a diplomat tries hard to write a winning story. At first he seems to succeed in its basic model. The idea of telling a life story through a set of thirteen narrative answers is a very imaginative one. But that is about where the positives in the novel end. |
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| 24. The Day of the Scorpion |
Anant Kumar |
| by Paul Scott |
|
| Set in the 1930s and ‘40s, this brilliantly written novel is a psychological study of the colonial British and the colonized Indians during the last turbulent years of the British Raj . |
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| 25. Ghost Wars |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Steve Coll |
|
| If, like most Americans, you think of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a singular event, Coll has a surprise for you. In this book, which won the 2005 Pultizer for nonfiction, he puts the attacks in the context of the history of Afghanistan. |
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| 26. Maximum City |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Suketu Mehta |
|
| While every megacity has its devotees and its poets, Mumbai seems to have had more than its fair share. The New York based writer Suketu Mehta has often written about the city of his childhood, which he still prefers to call Bombay. |
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| 27. An Outline of the Republic |
Poornima Apte |
| by Siddhartha Deb |
|
| Siddhartha Deb’s new novel begins beautifully and with promise: "They gave me the vaguest of assignments before packing me off to the region, introducing the subject late one night in the company urinals," he writes, "It was a dimly lit room, the low-powered bulb dangling from the ceiling creating more shadows than light in that space where all things spoke of age and ill maintenance." |
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| 28. Himalaya |
Revti-Raman Chauhan |
| by Michael Palin |
|
| The sweep of this book is awesome. Forty-eight destinations in six countries (seven if one counts his one leg stretched out across the border in Myanmar) spread over more than 3000 kilometers. |
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| 29. The Idea of Pakistan |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Stephen P. Cohen |
|
| Professor Stephen P. Cohen's knowledge of Pakistan is deep and long, and he uses it to prescribe effective American policies in his latest book, "The Idea of Pakistan''. This book superficially resembles "India: Emerging Power'' that Cohen wrote in 2001. But while that earlier book dealt primarily with foreign policy, "The Idea of Pakistan'' is a much more comprehensive look at the internal history, political dynamics, and external strategic affairs of Pakistan. |
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| 30. Spice: The History of a Temptation |
Poornima Apte |
| by Jack Turner |
|
| This fascinating book traces the rise and fall of spices throughout history. Since spices were a big obsession, the reader also gets a peek at the socio-cultural history of the times. |
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| 31. Sacred Sanskrit Words |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Leza Lowitz and Reema Datta |
|
| The authors put together this primer in response to requests from yoga students who wanted to learn Sanskrit chants and terms. The book opens with a history of Sanskrit, and a section devoted to the sounds of the language and the Devanagari script. The "Sanskrit Here and Now" section is a balanced overview of the state of the language today. |
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| 32. 786 Cybercafe |
Yasir Shah |
| by Bina Shah |
|
| Pakistani writer Bina Shah’s third book deals with the challenges to launching a business in Pakistan – the greed, the religious extremism and the corruption. But this is not just any business. It is a bold and alien concept - a cyber café in the repressive neighborhood of Karachi’s Tariq Road. |
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| 33. The Last Song of Dusk |
Poornima Apte |
| by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi |
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| Readers who shy away from magical realism might find Shanghvi’s descriptions quite outlandish. Shanghvi himself has admitted that not everyone might take to his writing easily. In a published interview, he said he liked what his sister once told him: "If everyone loves you, you are boring." |
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| 34. Under her skin |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Pooja Makhijani |
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| Twenty women describe their childhood experiences relating to race. The black-white divide is explored from many angles, as are several in-between perspectives. A 360-degree view that is fresh, honest and courageous. |
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| 35. Shantaram |
Poornima Apte |
| by Gregory David Roberts |
|
| Shantaram emerges as a bloated account of one man’s escapades in a city he is very much taken by. Roberts’ love for Bombay is very evident in these pages and many statements he makes both about the city and its residents will strike a warm chord. |
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| 36. Skipping Christmas |
Nandini Pandya |
| by John Grisham |
|
| The book starts with a very promising and original premise: Do we have to spend huge gobs of money and drive ourselves crazy each year in the name of the "Holidays?" Luther Krank, an accountant by profession, thinks he has the answer. And it is a loud and resounding, "No." |
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| 37. The Zigzag Way |
Poornima Apte |
| by Anita Desai |
|
| Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of The Zigzag Way is the history of the Cornish people in Mexico—a pattern of migration enchanting not just for its simple occurrence and the economic forces that made it happen, but also for its similarities with more recent ones. |
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| 38. Queen of Dreams |
Gauri Sirur |
| by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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| The novel opens by plunging the reader into the middle of a character’s dream. It is an excellent device because the author’s magical use of words allows the reader to experience the dream vividly. The author also uses the dream to foreshadow one of the pivotal events in the story. |
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| 39. Moving On |
Ranjani Nellore |
| by Shashi Deshpande |
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| Shashi Deshpande is well-known in literary circles for depicting the quotidian life of the average Indian. What has earned her respect is her uncompromising stance as an Indian writer who writes in English, but steadfastly resists the malaise that afflicts the current crop of Indian writers. |
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| 40. The Pearl Diver |
Poornima Apte |
| by Sujata Massey |
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| Fans of Rei Shimura, the Japanese sleuth, will be delighted to see her return - although this time around, she is on less exotic ground, in Washington D.C. |
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| 41. If You Are Afraid of Heights |
Mary Whipple |
| by Raj Kamal Jha |
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| A haunting novel which takes the reader to new heights on the back of a crow, Jha's latest novel tells three mysterious and unsettling stories from three points of view, all with overlapping imagery. |
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| 42. Beneath a Marble Sky |
Mary Whipple |
| by John Shors |
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| Though this is a very romantic novel, dealing with two love stories involving royal characters who face dramatic events and great danger, author John Shors keeps a firm rein on his prose, avoiding florid passages and "pretty" language in favor an elegant, formal, and more restrained style. Life in the court is fully researched and described in vivid detail, but the descriptions are used to help advance the action and, often, to reveal character, rather than for their own sake or for their sensational value. |
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| 43. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall |
Poornima Apte |
| by M.G.Vassanji |
|
| Canadian author, M.G. Vassanji’s latest novel could be touted as a political, historical, or even a coming-of-age novel. But at its most basic core it serves us lasting proof that our deepest childhood traumas can haunt and shape our future at every step. |
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| 45. Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Strobe Talbott |
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| Strobe Talbott, who served as deputy secretary of state for the United States from 1994 to 2001, is now president of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Engaging India is his memoir of his diplomatic dealings with India regarding nuclear nonproliferation. |
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| 46. The Opposite of Fate |
Ranjani Nellore |
| by Amy Tan |
|
| In this unusual book of "musings", Tan, who shot to fame with the success of her first novel "The Joy Luck Club" gives a glimpse into her past, her family and her inspirations for writing. The book has several essays, some brief, some rambling, all fascinating aspects to this writer who is not afraid to boldly comment on the implications of bearing the label of "Asian American" writer even though she is a natural-born U.S. citizen. |
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| 47. The Village Bride of Beverly Hills |
Poornima Apte |
| by Kavita Daswani |
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| Kavita Daswani seems to have found her niche--writing stories about upper class Indian women and their struggles with relationships. As Seattle Weekly put it: "Sex and the City with saris and samosas." |
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| 48. There is Room For You |
Poornima Apte |
| by Charlotte Bacon |
|
| Author Charlotte Bacon has an impressive ability to juxtapose families and place; she did this with considerable success in Lost Geography chronicling a family saga in nearby Canada. The setting in her latest novel, is considerably further away—There is Room For You is set in India and the story is more intimate even if it is set amidst the country’s teeming millions. |
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| 49. The Sari Shop |
Poornima Apte |
| by Rupa Bajwa |
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| Rupa Bajwa is a young writer who lives and works in Amritsar. Her first novel, The Sari Shop explores her hometown well and the peculiar class dynamics that infect all of India. |
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| 50. At the Water’s Edge |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Pradeep Jeganathan |
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| This is a slim book of seven short stories written by an author who lived in the US for a few years and then moved back to his native Sri Lanka. The stories fall into two genres – one, the inner lives of everyday folk in Sri Lanka and the other, glimpses of lives lived on the US-Sri Lanka cultural divide. |
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| 51. Defying Gravity |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Prill Boyle |
|
A celebration of late-blooming women.
Upon reaching her 100th birthday, a woman was asked on National Public Radio if she had any regrets in her life. She paused for a moment and replied, "If I had known I would live to be a hundred, I would have taken up the violin at 40. By now I could have been playing for sixty years!" |
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| 52. Transmission |
Poornima Apte |
| by Hari Kunzru |
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| This is a hilarious rip-roaring ride executed mostly through the eyes of a wide-eyed innocent, computer programmer, Arjun Mehta, recently sent to California on assignment. The term "body shopper" might not be very politically correct anymore but that is sadly Arjun’s fate as he waits his turn at assignments that could pretty much take him anywhere in the country. |
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| 53. I Dream of Microwaves |
Poornima Apte |
| by Imad Rahman |
|
| Imad Rahman, the author of I Dream of Microwaves, is a young Pakistani-American who grew up in Karachi and came to the United States when he was eighteen. His book is an impressive if slightly incoherent debut centered on Kareem Abdul Jabbar (no, not the basketball star) a struggling Pakistani-American actor. |
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| 54. Holy Cow |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Sarah Macdonald |
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| India as a supermarket of spirituality. Told in a light-hearted yet thought-provoking manner. |
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| 55. Asleep |
Ashini Desai |
| by Banana Yoshimoto |
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| The book consists of three novellas. While the plots and characters are unique, they blend into one story, as if painted with one brush. There is a universal theme of a "spiritual sleep." |
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| 56. Aloft |
Poornima Apte |
| by Chang-Rae Lee |
|
| Lee, a well-assimilated son of immigrant Koreans, has translated the immigrant dislocation into powerful experience. But Lee is special in that he has used this immigrant "spectator" status to create characters immigrant or not, who are quite disengaged and riddled with a powerful rootlessness. |
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| 57. The Body |
Poornima Apte |
| by Hanif Kureishi |
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| Kureishi’s book reminds us that our lives are more complex than we can imagine. Reinvention of the self is surely possible but only with the materials you have on your person now. |
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| 58. Death of a Red Heroine |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Qiu Xiaolong |
|
| This is a murder mystery convincingly set in the life and politics of modern, nineties China. Qiu Xiaolong weaves his story around the backbone of a cynical view of the politics that permeates modern Chinese government, where High Cadre party members head a pyramid of power and privilege amidst the tremendous wants of the common people. |
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| 59. The Snow Fox |
Mary Whipple |
| by Susan Fromberg Schaffer |
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| In this most romantic of novels, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer recreates eleventh century court life in Japan, reflecting the glorious aesthetic sensibilities and the bloodthirsty brutality, the sense of honor and the petty jealousies, the samurai code and the human need for love. |
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| 60. Nehru: The Invention of India |
Poornima Apte |
| by Shashi Tharoor |
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| "Jawaharlal Nehru’s impact on India is too great not to be reexamined periodically," writes Tharoor. At a time when most young Indians probably do not value the strength of the great leader’s legacy, this beautifully told narrative could not be more relevant and important. Tharoor himself admits that the book "is not a scholarly work" and that his admiration for the man deepened as he finished it. |
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| 61. Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate |
Poornima Apte |
| by Amitava Kumar |
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| The true finds in Away are the writings by the earliest expatriates. Dean Mahomed, a Patna-born businessman who traveled to Ireland and England in the 1820’s and opened shampooing parlors that boasted medicinal properties. |
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| 62. Suburban Sahibs |
Poornima Apte |
| by S. Mitra Kalita |
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| A second-generation Indian American, Washington Post reporter Kalita decided to write about the Indians settled in New Jersey after venturing out into the suburbs of the state and meeting face-to-face many of the Indians who were rapidly transforming the meaning of American suburbia in small Jersey towns. |
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| 63. The Mystic Masseur |
Ranjani Nellore |
| by V.S.Naipaul |
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| What makes this book especially enjoyable is Naipaul’s use of dialog, which lends an air of authenticity to the story. Having never lived or even visited Trinidad, I could easily visualize the dusty villages with people who routinely use phrases like "Why for you wearing this, man?" |
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| 64. One Last Look |
Mary Whipple |
| by Susanna Moore |
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| "England will define what it is to be Indian. A good way to start, of course, is to make sure that Indians look like our idea of Indians. Turbans and sashes thought to be Mughal will do nicely. Even the English officers of our native sepoys will affect a touch of Indian costume; it is good for the morale of both. We will win their loyalty and gratitude without giving up a thing." Or so they thought!! |
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| 65. For Matrimonial Purposes |
Bonnie Zare |
| by Kavita Daswani |
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| Lately there has been a wave of humorous mass-market fiction that depicts female protagonists who are juggling multiple, often contradictory, goals. In the tradition of "Bridget Jones’ Diary " and "I Don’t Know How She Does It", this novel offers a similarly humorous tell-all novel about a woman from Bombay who is negotiating an arranged marriage. |
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| 66. The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits |
Mary Whipple |
| by Christopher Benfey |
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| This is the story of the remarkable 50-year collaboration between imaginative Japanese emissaries to the western world (the Japanese eccentrics of the title) and disillusioned Americans seeking solace and inspiration in Japan's old values (the Gilded Age misfits). |
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| 67. Adama |
Mary Whipple |
| by Turki Al-Hamad |
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| As fascinating as this book is for its glimpses of a young man’s political and philosophical coming-of-age in Saudi Arabia, it is equally fascinating for what its banning reveals about the several countries which have tried to suppress it. |
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| 68. Operation Monsoon |
Poornima Apte |
| by Shona Ramaya |
|
| This is a collection of a rare breed of short stories—one in which the author is interested in the incidents that happen at the fringes when two cultures intersect. Refreshingly, we learn that the author would prefer to visualize a merging of cultures as opposed to a more violent clash of two seemingly disparate entities. |
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| 69. Train to Pakistan |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Khushwant Singh |
|
| Partition, a euphemism for the bloody violence that preceded the birth of India and Pakistan as the British hurriedly handed over power in 1947, is becoming a fading word in the history books. First-hand accounts will soon vanish. Khushwant Singh, who was over thirty at the time, later wrote Train to Pakistan and got it published in 1956. Reprinted since then, reissued in hardcover, and translated into many languages, the novel is now known as a classic, one of the finest and best-known treatments of the subject. |
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| 70. May you be the Mother of a Hundred Sons |
Ranjani Nellore |
| by Elisabeth Bumiller |
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| The author, a Washington Post reporter, spent four years in India in the late eighties. I was impressed by her sense of adventure in traveling all over the country in pursuit of her subject, whether that took her into the luxurious lives of Bollywood stars or to the most primitive huts in villages. |
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| 71. The Namesake |
Poornima Apte |
| by Jhumpa Lahiri |
|
| Her new novel exhibits the author's signature style. In it she revisits issues that she knows well—cultural displacement, sense of identity, and belonging with one foot in two worlds. |
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| 72. Brick Lane |
Poornima Apte |
| by Monica Ali |
|
| One of Brick Lane’s many excellent character studies is Nazneen’s husband, Chanu, who rails endlessly against "Ignorant Types" that stand in the way of his promotion at his university. In a style that may seem familiar to many South Asians, he is also quick to distance himself from other fellow Bangladeshis, the "peasants" who "just re-create the villages here (in England)." |
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| 74. A Breath of Fresh Air |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Amulya Malladi |
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| This book transports the reader to a different time and place – contemporary India. Sure there are currently many books that claim to describe contemporary Indian life. This book is special because the narration, the characters and the situations in which they find themselves are all remarkably authentic. |
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| 75. In Times of Siege |
Poornima Apte |
| by Githa Hariharan |
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| A novel based in contemporary India, that tackles issues such as rising fundamentalism and who defines history. |
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| 76. Kartography |
Mary Whipple |
| by Kamila Shamsie |
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| In this warm and complex study of friendship, love, and roots, Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie focuses on the relationships and interactions of a group of vividly realized, upper-class residents of Karachi. |
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| 77. For Matrimonial Purposes |
Poornima Apte |
| by Kavita Daswani |
|
| Indian marriages, especially the arranged kind, must be all the rage these days, because rights for fashion writer Kavita Daswani’s book, For Matrimonial Purposes, have been sold in eight countries around the world. |
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| 78. The Mango Season |
Poornima Apte |
| by Amulya Malladi |
|
| Malladi’s latest novel focuses on Priya, a woman who is visiting India (Hyderabad) after having left for the US seven years earlier. Priya’s anguish at being away from home (San Francisco), her desperate need for acceptance by her family (especially her mother) are right on the mark. |
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| 79. Bunker 13 |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Aniruddha Bahal |
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| No one would accuse Bunker 13 of being literary or in fine taste. In this genre, character and setting are given short shrift; plot, action, and attitude are everything. And Bunker 13 delivers all three by the truckful. |
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| 80. The Kite Runner |
Sudheer Apte |
| by Khaled Hosseini |
|
| Khaled Hosseini's father was an Afghan diplomat who fled to America in 1980 with his family after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. Hosseini, who was fifteen at the time, has now written his first novel, The Kite Runner, as a sort of dedication to the country of his birth. |
|
| 81. A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies |
Murali Kamma |
| by John Murray |
|
| In a New York Times profile, Murray explains why he turned to fiction: "I wanted to get at the issue of people caught between worlds – past and present, intellect and emotion, and between cultures." |
|
| 82. When Peacocks Dance |
Poornima Apte |
| by Vasanthi Victor |
|
| The protagonists in this collection of stories are primarily women who are caught between the diasporic "here" and "there." |
|
| 83. Bangkok 8 |
Sudheer Apte |
| by John Burdett |
|
| John Burdett, who quit his job in Hong Kong to become a writer, has concocted a spicy police thriller in coconut curry. The action starts in the middle of a car chase in Bangkok that ends violently for two of the participants, and the story speeds up after that. |
|
| 84. Small Remedies |
Ranjani Nellore |
| by Shashi Deshpande |
|
| The story unfolds in the tiny town of Bhavanipur where Savitribai Indorekar, the well-known singer of classical music makes her home in the last days of her life. Madhu arrives in Bhavanipur ostensibly to interview Savitribai in order to write her biography. |
|
| 85. The Feast of Roses |
Poornima Apte |
| by Indu Sundaresan |
|
| Nearly 400 years ago in the imperial Mughal courts of India, Empress Nur Jahan (Mehrunissa) was a force to contend with. The love of Emperor Jahangir, she ruled the land vicariously through him and displayed enormous intelligence and cunning in holding on to her power. |
|
| 86. In Search of King Solomon’s Mines |
Mary Whipple |
| by Tahir Shah |
|
| "As soon as there’s a bomb, an earthquake, a tidal wave or a riot, I call the travel agent and book cut-price seats," Tahir Shah says in this book’s opening pages, as he attempts to explain his need for adventure and his pursuit of arcane knowledge. |
|
| 87. Monsoon Diary |
Mary Whipple |
| by Shoba Narayan |
|
| Even when people do not share a culture, as is the case here with Shoba Narayan and me, the common memories of foods and their roles in our personal histories bind us. |
|
| 88. Bombay-London-New York: A Literary Journey |
Murali Kamma |
| by Amitava Kumar |
|
| In this absorbing memoir, Amitava Kumar – who teaches English at Penn State University – is primarily concerned with a literary journey, which he ebulliently undertakes in the company of several Indo-Anglican writers. |
|
| 89. West of Kabul, East of New York |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Tamim Ansary |
|
| Whereas a contemporary history of Afghanistan can be obtained from many other sources, the story of Ansary’s family gives us a first-hand look at the life of a family that found itself an expatriate both in America and in Afghanistan. The story is marked by much more than the usual challenges of alienation and adjustment. |
|
| 90. The Painter of Signs |
Mary Whipple |
| by R. K. Narayan |
|
| First published in 1976, this bittersweet novel is as fresh and charming today as it was when originally published. |
|
| 91. Motiba’s Tattoos |
Nandini Pandya |
| by Mira Kamdar |
|
| Spanning the last century, this book traces the journey of one family from rural India to Burma, Bombay and finally, America. If you read just one book this year, make it "Motiba's Tattoos". |
|
| 92. The Point of Return |
Poornima Apte |
| by Siddhartha Deb |
|
| At a time when writers from India are all the rage, it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Siddhartha Deb is most certainly one of the brightest young talents to have emerged from the subcontinent in quite a while. His debut novel, The Point of Return, wins high marks both for its distinctive literary style and its powerful story line. |
|
| 93. White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India |
Sudheer Apte |
| by William Dalrymple |
|
| William Dalrymple has found his calling. If his earlier "City of Djinns" was an appetizer, "White Mughals" is a main course. While the former was a broad-brush treatment of the innumerable historical layers of Delhi from time immemorial to the present, "White Mughals" is a deeper, more thorough look at one particular phenomenon in the late eighteenth century: namely, the rise of a little-advertized cadre of Indianized Britishers who adopted the customs and language of their colonies, took Indian wives, and generally turned native. |
|
| 94. Heaven’s Edge |
Mary Whipple |
| by Romesh Gunesekera |
|
| This strange, hypnotic, and complex novel had me completely in its thrall from beginning to end. It is intensely romantic, thoughtful in its philosophical observations, gorgeous in its sensuous descriptions of the natural world, but also saturated with heart-stopping, war-time carnage. |
|
| 95. Flash House |
Poornima Apte |
| by Aimee Liu |
|
| In a recently independent India, Joanna Shaw is an American citizen working in a non-profit agency in New Delhi—Salaamat Jannat. The institution takes in girls from the streets and tries to rebuild their shattered lives. |
|
| 96. Red Poppies |
Mary Whipple |
| by Alai |
|
| If you think of Tibet as a place of mystery and mysticism, an ethereal and other-worldly place which rejects the physical world in favor of the spiritual, you are in for some huge surprises when you read this book. |
|
| 97. By the Sea |
Mary Whipple |
| by Abdulrazak Gurnah |
|
| It’s hard to imagine why this thoughtful and beautifully constructed novel by an author of immense talent is so little known and so little praised. It's a very strong book, filled with sensual images, | |
