Biblio-India (need subscription)
Subcontinent Literary Forum
A site dedicated to Indian English-language Literature
Post-Colonial & Post-Imperial Literature in English, a project funded by at the National University of Singapore.
Great source for translations of Indian & South East Asian literature. Also see this site for a good review on "Indo-Anglian" Literature. Incidentally, I am reading Amit Chaudhuri's compilation, Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature, which albeit limited by what was available to him as translations, also features quite a few authors who write/wrote in Indian languages. In my mind, it is not so much that we do not have a cultural ethos to claim through literature, it is that we do not recognize or understand it. For every Isaac Babel, there is a Munshi Premchand, that looms large over the Indian literary landscape.. and so, in that context, this compilation is a welcome bridge for us English readers.
Oasis Books - an interesting bookstore in Chennai!
Vendor of treats - a tribute to RK Narayan
I have heard of Ved Mehta but did not really know what he wrote or who he is... Wow.. an interesting life. Quite a man.. read this interesting review by Khushwant Singh of Ved Mehta's book The Red Letters - My father's enchanted period.
Stranger in a familiar land: While the governments of Pakistan and India are struggling to resolve their differences, the people of the two countries have more in common than they might imagine, as Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie discovered when she went to work in Madras.
Rushdie has failed to capture his magic from the 80s in the 90s! Padmalaxmi as his Muse, seems to have only made it worse - I found 'The Fury' to be unreadable! 'Ground beneath her feet' was enjoyable initially but I didn't finish it - probably should give it a second try! Later this year, Rushdie will come out with his latest novel, Shalimar the Clown (Update: Some reviews here. I have not tried reading it myself). He recently told reporters in Calcutta: "It's a horror story which starts with a murder. But it's not a whodunit." Wife Padma Lakshmi, the first to read it, described the experience as "an ordeal". "He stood behind me throughout, looking over my shoulder the whole time, inquiring every now and then why I did not laugh at things which were meant to be funny." I guess even his wife doesn't get him these days!! :)
Update: Two Lives has been published. You can hear a short excerpt of Seth talking about the book.
The Indian Fiction Top 25 (English language, no translations) by Jerry Pinto, poet, journalist, and author. (via Kitabkhana)
1. Vikram Chandra: Love and Longing in Bombay
2. Aubrey Menen: The Fig Tree
3. Rohinton Mistry: Tales from Firozhsha Baug
4. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Interpreter of Maladies
5. Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist
6. G V Desani: All About H Hatterr
7. Vikram Seth: The Golden Gate
8. Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children
9. R K Narayan: Swami and Friends
10. Mulk Raj Anand: Coolie
11. Kamala Markandaya: Nectar in a Sieve
12. Anita Desai: Baumgartner's Bombay
13. Amitav Ghosh: The Shadow Lines
14. I Allan Sealy: The Trotternama
15. Shashi Tharoor: The Great Indian Novel
16. Githa Hariharan: When Dreams Travel
17. Kiran Nagarkar: Raavan & Eddie
18. Shashi Deshpande: That Long Silence
19. Arundhathi Roy: The God of Small Things
20. Raja Rao: Kanthapura
21. Khushwant Singh: Delhi
22. Nisha Da Cunha: Old Cypress
23. Ruskin Bond: The Room on the Roof
24. Gita Mehta: The River Sutra
25. Indi Rana: The Devil in the Dustbin
Some books by Indian authors from the 1990s and this decade:
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
The Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh
In an Antique Land : History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by Amitav Ghosh
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
The Calcutta Chromosome : A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery
A New World by Amit Chaudhuri
Freedom Song by Amit Chaudhuri
Three Novels by Amit Chaudhuri (A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song)
English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery by Amitav Ghosh
Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni (whose previous novels include The Vine of Desire, The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams and her collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage)
Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan
Kartography by Kamila Shamsie
Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie
Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie
The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran
Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar
The House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar
The Village Bride of Bevery Hills by Kavita Daswani
A Breath of Fresh Air (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Amulya Malladi
Serving Crazy with Curry by Amulya Malladi
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair
Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur
The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa
A River Sutra by Gita Mehta
Darjeeling by Bharti Kirchner
The Hero's Walk (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Anita Rau Badami
Tamarind Woman (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Anita Rau Badami
For Matrimonial Purposes by Kavita Daswani
Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America by S. Mitra Kalita
Wow.. interesting new out-of-the-box stuff from India ...(after some rather mundane literature that I have run into lately from India (seems to be easy to get published if you are writing ethnic stories! Frankly, novels like Sari Shop, etc. are what make people say Indian literature is ..)
a) Corridor, the first graphic novel of India by Sarnath Bannerjee
b) Short Story by Rohit Gupta (he blogs too!) 'Doppler Effect', rendered into a comic by Gabriel Greenberg.
Rohit's work Towers of Silence is also featured in Mid-Day as a special series of comics. In Rohit's own words, The Doppler Effect, deals impassionately with the Hindu-Muslim riots in Godhra (Gujarat) and The Towers Of Silence with the decline of Parsi population in India.?
SALTAF 2004 - the South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival
Kaavya Vishwanathan, a 17-yr old freshman at Harvard has received a two-book deal worth $500,000 with Little Brown & Company, one of the oldest and most prestigious American publishers - now part of the Time Warner Group
Kaushik Banerjee celebrates the burgeoning Indo-Anglian writing scene. There definitely have been lots of books from Indian authors lately... not sure all of these are literature of the highest value - have a feeling anything written in English with an Indian/Pakistani theme sounds exotic enough to be published lately. But not every book can be a Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri) or The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)...
Suketu Mehta's recent well-received book , Maximum City apparently is the book to read, especially for Mumbai-ites like me. (Also read his article on Bollywood in National Geographic and an article on the US's biggest power outage, as experienced in New York City in 2003.)
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (he suddenly became famous after Oprah featured his book, A Fine Balance on her show... the book caught the attention of readers everywhere and sold in record numbers years after it was first published in 1995, because of being on the show!)
The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal of Tehelkacom fame is getting rave reviews ever-since its fanfare-laden launch. Even Naipual has apparently raved about it saying, 'At last - a new and brilliantly original novel from India.' Read an extract and an interesting reader-discussion here. On a side-note, the blog entry 'An Open Letter to Tehelka' is a good read.
Oct 31, 2005: Amrita Pritam is no more..(some good links at this link). Not a good week for Indian writers.. earlier this week... Writer Nirmal Verma is no more
2006
The time of the year for Lists..why not a list of what many prominent Indians have read over the past year, with a quaintly title of Where's A Bookmark When U Need One ?
Adapted from the Literary saloon at the Complete Review - One of the big (1200 pages - so very big, at least page-wise) books of the coming year will be Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games.
First there was lots of press about the huge advance he got for the book, and now the publicity machine in India is abuzz with interviews and profiles in what seems like every paper. For example, read some interviews and profiles in:
The Hindu
The Indian Express
DNA - including an interview
Economic Times
Mid-Day
And this paper lists the book as one of the 36 reasons to wake up to 2006!!! Wow..now thats hype!! :)
The Hutch-Crossword 2005 Book Awards are out - English Fiction , Indian Language Fiction Translation, and a new category, English Non-Fiction - via zigzackly
I noticed in the library that Stephen Wolpert has new books - A New History of India in 2003 and Encyclopedia Of India in 2005. His earlier book from the 90s India and John Keay's book, India: A History are probably the best two books on Indian history. I do not own either though I have read both...
Kiran Nagarkar, writes Shoma Chaudhury at tehelka.com 'combines the self-belief of the great artist with the neuroses of the neglected. All his last three novels have taken huge risks and broken new ground. But recognition has been slow. Now, nine years after the last, he's back with a giant book.' (Need Tehelka.com subscription to read the article). Kiran Nagarkar tells The Hindu about his new book, God's Little Soldier and a conversation with Another Subcontinent's Arnab Chakladhar
The Postmodern Moralist- Pankaj Mishra reviews Consider the Lobster, a book of essays, by David Foster Wallace (Read his commencement speech at Kenyon from May 2005.)
Great review by Jai Arjun of Rajorshi Chakraborti's debut novel, Or the Day Seizes You. Jai Arjun, a Delhi-based journalist, has a great blog called Jabberwock, also has a blog post with a conversation he had with the author.
Need to read Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian. Looks like a must-read for every Indian...which some are calling his most significant book to date.
Kaushik Basu on Amartya Sen's seminal new book - Imagining India - Asserting a new vision of India
In a new book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen maintains that democracy is about much more than elections, and that India's democracy flourishes amid a long tradition of dispute, discussion and debate. - NPR
The Argumentative Indian - a collection of 16 essays, many reworked and expanded from lectures and previously published articles - is an intellectual tour de force from an economist who can lay equal claim to the designations of sociologist, historian, political analyst and moral philosopher. It is a magisterial work, except that the adjective is not one of which Sen would approve. - via Chron.com
In this superb collection of essays, Sen smashes quite a few stereotypes and places the idea of India and Indianness in its rightful, deserved context. Central to his notion of India, as the title suggests, is the long tradition of argument and public debate, of intellectual pluralism and generosity that informs India's history. - Excerpts from a review in the Guardian.The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen, a review published in The Asian Review of Books.
Beyond the call centre, a review published in The Guardian. In defence of reason, another review from The Guardian.
Also, Antara has a nice post with details of a 'conversation' with Amartya Sen, where he speaks of how he came to write The Argumentative Indian.
Also read Sen's latest book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, on which Jai Arjun has a great blog writeup.
Development as Freedom
Commodities and Capabilities
On Ethics and Economics
On Economic Inequality (Radcliffe Lectures)
Inequality Reexamined
Rationality and Freedom
Naipaul probably does not qualify as literature from the Indian sub-continent... but anyways, here goes... apparently, he has a new book, Magic Seeds, which misses the magic, per this review in the Harvard Book Review.
Celeberating R. K. Narayan, on the occasion of his 100th anniversary is Jhumpa Lahiri (read her recent short story in New Yorker magazine) through this article, Narayan Days.
Read this Jhumpa Lahiri short story in New Yorker magazine from May 2006.
An overview of her literature is here. I have enjoyed Lahiri's short stories far more than anything I have read from other Indian-origin authors who reside in the US...only because she did not make a big deal of mixed culturual identities (she writes equally well about both Indian and American personas and a good short story is exactly that - a good story about people!)...or so i thought until I saw this WSJ article about Lahiri and her hyphenated existence. Wonder if the media makes a big deal out of this every time they encounter an author of Indian origin or whether they do so only because Indian authors have made through the past decade or more made multi-culturism their only selling point. Its probably a little of both but it also is a chicken and egg problem of sorts ....