Fancy some weekend reading? Indian stories are big right now, and not just Slumdog: Indian novels are in fashion. The White Tiger took the 2008 Booker prize. Meanwhile the block-busting colossus that’s Shantaram seems to be everywhere; it’s best read in Bombay, but failing that, it’s a great beach / airport book.
I find Indian stories fascinating: it’s a country of superlatives that are cliched by repetition, but true nonetheless – crowded, colourful, noisy, warm, violent, relaxed; it will have soon the largest national population in the world, it’s been described ‘as the least boring country in the world’, and it seems to be both the best and worst country in the world all at once.
India is an ancient culture reinventing itself daily, and is home to some of the most civilised and uncivilised existences imaginable. It’s also the subject of some great novels and travel books. Here are ten that are worth reading (and one to avoid):
1. Sacred Games Vikram Chandra. ‘We live in Kaliyuga – the hot bed of sin’. Bombay vividly alive. Epic detective/mafia fiction.
2. Love and Longing in Bombay Vikram Chandra. Warm short stories of contradiction and tension from contemporary Bombay.
3. A Passage to India E. M. Forster. Colonial fiction, staggeringly breathtaking in its perfection.
4. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry. Delicate and brutal fiction about the Indira Ghandi era.
5. The Hungry Tide Amitav Ghosh. Well-told story set in endless mangrove swamps from an author with a deft vivid touch.
6. Kim Rudyard Kipling. Boy’s own fiction. Easy reading, colourful, noisy.
7. Maximum City Suketa Mehta. Autobiography, a dense and fascinating homage to Bombay.
8. Chasing the Monsoon Alexander Frater. Travel writing – one man’s quest to get rained on along the length of the India.
9. Last Jet Engine Laugh Ruchir Joshi. Indian fiction without the cliches that litter the blockbusters.
10. No Full Stops in India Mark Tully. Travel / documentary from a legendary BBC correspondent.
One to avoid: A Million Mutinies Now V. S. Naipaul. Painful to spend time with.
