Looking for Best English Book by Indian Authors? Books come as life savers in every situation. On a long journey, a sleepless night, or a lazy day, a book can be your companion in every mood. Cicero said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” And we couldn’t agree more. There is nothing stronger than the power of words. Books are our best friends and our most trusted companion.
It always takes a lot of time to decide which book to pick as there are thousands of options available. So, save your time as we present to you the list of 20 gems of Indian English literature that you must read.
Here’s a list of Best English Book by Indian Authors:
- The story of my experiments with truth by Mahatma Gandhi
- The Guide by R.K. Narayan
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- Midnight Children by Salman Rushdie
- The Interpreter of Maldives by Jhumpa Lahiri
- A suitable boy by Vikram Seth
- God of small things by Arundhati Roy
- The glass palace by Amitav Gosh
- The Inheritence of Loss by Kiran Desai
- The Private Life of an Indian Prince by Mulk Raj Anand
- Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra
- Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
1. The story of my experiments with truth by Mahatma Gandhi – This unusual autobiography “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, is a window to the workings of Mahatma Gandhi’s mind- a window to the emotions of his heart, a window to understanding what drove this seemingly ordinary man to the heights of being the father of a nation- India. Starting with his days as a boy, Gandhi takes one through his trials, turmoils, and situations that molded his philosophy of life- going through child marriage, his studies in England, practicing Law in South Africa- and his Satyagraha there- to the early beginnings of the Independence movement in India. He did not aim to write an autobiography but rather share the experience of his various experiments with truth to arrive at what he perceived as Absolute Truth- the ideal of his struggle against racism, violence, and colonialism.
2. The Guide by R.K Narayan – Railway Raju is a disarmingly corrupt tourist guide, who lives by his wits and falls in love with a beautiful dancer. This novel was published in 1958 and is written. It is based on Malgudi, a fictional town in South India.
3. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – India, 1975. An unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared the State of Emergency. Amidst a backdrop of wild political turmoil, the lives of four unlikely strangers collide forever.
An epic panorama of modern India in all its corruption, violence, and heroism, A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry’s prize-winning masterpiece: a Dickensian modern classic brimming with compassion, humor, and insight – and a hymn to the human spirit in an inhuman state.
4. Midnight Children by Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children by the renowned author Sulman Rushdie is an epic novel that opens up with a child being born at midnight on 15th August 1947, just at a time when India is achieving Independence from centuries of foreign British colonial rule. Winner of the Booker Prize, this book has been added to the list of Great Books of the 20th century and narrates the story of Saleem Siana and the times he lives with the newborn nation. Divided into three parts, the novel begins with the story of Siani’s family and the various events that lead to India’s independence and eventually to partition.
Born precisely at midnight, Saleem was born with telepathic powers and later discovered that all the kids were born in India between 12 A. M. and 1 A. M. are impregnated with the special power. Using his telepathic powers, he assembles a conference with all kids to reflect upon the issues like culture, linguistics, religion, and political differences to shape the nation. Highlighting the relation between father and son and a nation yet in its nascent stage, it is an enchanting family adventure with lots of human drama and shocking summoning.
5. The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri– A debut collection of short fiction blends elements of Indian traditions with the complexities of American culture in such tales as “A Temporary Matter,” in which a young Indian-American couple confronts their grief over the loss of a child, while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. Original. 20,000 first printing.
6. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth – Now a television series on Acorn TV, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair “Surrender to this strange, beguiling world and be swept away on the wings of story. It is difficult to imagine that many contemporary writers could give us a novel that provides so much deep satisfaction.” Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multi-ethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy tells the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love, ambition, humor, sadness, prejudice, reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette, and the most appalling violence. Vikram Seth’s novel is, at its core, a love story: the tale of Lata—and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra Attempting to find a suitable boy for Lata, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in the early 1950s in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, this compelling story takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves.
7. God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – Winner of the Man Booker Prize. An affluent Indian family is forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness “This book offers such magic, mystery, and sadness that, literally, this reader turned the last page and decided to reread it. Immediately. It’s that haunting.”—USA Today
Compared favorably to Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.
8. The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh – Rajkumar is about another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace when the British force the Burmese King, Queen, and all the Court into exile. He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma. But haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled.
The story follows the fortunes – rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma – which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British and Burmese relations, friends, and associates, builds up – from 1870 through the Second World War to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.
9. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. Kiran Desai’s brilliant novel, published to huge acclaim, is a story of joy and despair. Her characters face numerous choices that majestically illuminate the consequences of colonialism as it collides with the modern world.
10. The Private Life of an Indian Prince by Mulk Raj Anand – Anand’s most profound study of human nature. The story of a man’s compelling love for a woman’s at the same time a historical novel of unusual power, showing the demise of the princely states with the birth of a free India. Maharaja Ashok Kumar of Sham Pur asserts complete independence for his small hill-state rather than join the Indian Union. A febrile romantic, who has inherited more of the vices than the virtues of his ancestors, he is encouraged by his nymphomaniac mistress Ganga Dasi, a powerful and illiterate hill-woman whom he has installed in his palace to the exclusion of his three legitimate maharanis.
To feed his mistress’s greed, he extorts large sums of money from his starving peasantry. This provokes a revolt in Sham Pur which in turn incurs the extreme displeasure of the government in Delhi. His personal impulses and passions blind the Maharaja from the larger social issues involved. He meets Ganga’s challenge with hysterical tears, and his people and the Government of India with melodramatic gestures and self-deluding lies. Needless to say, he loses both contests. Exiled to London, he seduces a shop girl with all his former princely finesse. But he cannot forget his mistress and his love for her brings about his downfall.
11. Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra – The renowned author Sulman Rushdie is an epic novel that opens up with a child being born at midnight on 15th August 1947, just at a time when India is achieving Independence from centuries of foreign British colonial rule. Winner of the Booker Prize, this book has been added to the list of the Great Books of the 20th century and narrates the story of Saleem Siana and the times he lives with the newborn nation. Divided into three parts, the novel begins with the story of Scania’s family and the various events that lead to India’s independence and eventually to partition.
Born precisely at midnight, Saleem was born with telepathic powers and later discovered that all the kids were born in India between 12 A. M. and 1 A. M. are impregnated with the special power. Using his telepathic powers, he assembles a conference with all kids to reflect upon the issues like culture, linguistics, religion, and political differences to shape the nation. Highlighting the relation between father and son and a nation yet in its nascent stage, it is an enchanting family adventure with lots of human drama and shocking summoning.
12. Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore – Containing an assortment of one hundred and three poems, Gitanjali: Rabindranath Tagore is an English translation of various poems and works of the legendary Indian poet Shri Rabindranath Tagore. Translated by Tagore himself, the book contains fifty-three translated poems from the original Bengali version of Gitanjali: Rabindranath Tagore, as well as fifty other poems from eight of his other works on poetry and a drama titled Achalayatan.
An integration of two words, ‘Git’ and ‘Anjali,’ meaning song and offering respectively, the literal meaning of the word is ‘offering of songs.’ and because of the strong devotional tone and subliminal spiritual invitation, the book can be said to have devotion to god as its theme.
It highlights the poet’s intense response to the magnificence of the universe or rather an affirmation of life with all its abundance, mystery, and diversity. Though the translator and author of the original book are the same, the translations are radical, involving certain modifications and on the other hand, leaving out whole segments. Gitanjali: Rabindranath Tagore was published by Rupa in the year 2002, as a paperback edition. Key Features: The earliest edition of this book was instrumental in Tagore having received the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature.
These are some of the greatest English works by our Indian authors and they surely deserve our time and attention in the most applaudable way possible.
