60 Essential English-Language Works of Modern Indian Literature
The following post-independence books have served as important literary markers:
Fiction, Poetry & Drama
Agha Shahid Ali, The Veiled Suite: Collected Poems (Penguin, 2009)
Sarnath Banerjee, Corridor (Penguin, 2004)
Samit Basu, The GameWorld Trilogy: The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore's Secret, The Unwaba Revelations (Penguin, 2004–7)
Upamanyu Chatterjee, English, August (Faber & Faber, 1988)
Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (Faber & Faber, 1995)
Amit Chaudhuri, A Strange and Sublime Address (Vintage, 1999)
Chandrahas Choudhury, Arzee the Dwarf (HarperCollins, 2009)
Keki Daruwalla, Collected Poems 1970–2005 (Penguin, 2006)
Rana Dasgupta, Solo (HarperCollins, 2009)
Mahesh Dattani, Collected Plays, 2 vols. (Penguin, 2000)
Siddhartha Deb, The Point of Return (Picador, 2002)
Anita Desai, In Custody (Harper & Row, 1984)
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Penguin, 2006)
Shashi Deshpande, Collected Stories, 2 vols. (Penguin, 2003–4)
Amitav Ghosh, The Circle of Reason (Viking, 1986)
Sunetra Gupta, The Glassblower’s Breath (Orion, 1993)
Indrajit Hazra, The Burnt Forehead of Max Saul (Ravi Dayal, 2000)
Manju Kapur, Difficult Daughters (Faber & Faber, 1998)
Mukul Kesavan, Looking Through Glass (Ravi Dayal, 1995)
Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri (Pras Prakashan & NYRB Classics, 1976/2006)
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (Mariner, 1999)
Jayanta Mahapatra, The Lie of Dawns: Poems 1974–2008 (AuthorsPress, 2009)
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (Faber & Faber, 1991)
Dom Moraes, Collected Poems 1954–2004 (Penguin, 2004)
Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories (Ballantine, 1988)
A. K. Ramanujan, The Collected Poems (Oxford, 1995)
Anuradha Roy, An Atlas of Impossible Longing (Picador, 2008)
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (HarperCollins/Flamingo, 1997)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Avon, 1980)
Sudeep Sen, Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 1997)
Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate (Faber & Faber, 1986)
Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan (Grove/Roli, 1956/2006)
Tarun J. Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire (Picador, 2005)
Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian Novel (Penguin, 1989)
Anthologies
Rukun Advani, ed., Written For Ever: The Best of Civil Lines (Viking, 2009)
Meena Alexander, ed., Indian Love Poems (Knopf, 2005)
Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa, and Pireeni Sundaralingam, eds., Indivisible (University of Arkansas Press, 2010)
Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar, eds., Language for a New Century (Norton, 2008)
Amit Chaudhuri, ed., The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (Picador, 2001)
Adil Jussawalla, ed., New Writing in India (Penguin, 1974)
Amitava Kumar, ed., Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate (Penguin, 2003)
M. Lal & S. P. Kumar, eds., Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing (Penguin/IIC, 2009)
A. K. Mehrotra, ed., Twelve Modern Indian Poets (Oxford, 1992)
R. Parthasarathy, ed., Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets (Oxford, 1976)
Nilanjana S. Roy, ed., A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Food Writing (Penguin, 2004)
Salman Rushdie & Elizabeth West, eds., The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947–1997 (Vintage, 1997)
Sudeep Sen, ed., The HarperCollins Book of Modern English Poetry by Indians (HarperCollins, 2010)
Nonfiction & Criticism
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Macmillan/Picador, 1951/1999)
Kamala Das, My Story (DC Books/HarperCollins, 1988/2004)
Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (Oxford, 1998)
Amitav Ghosh, The Imam and the Indian (Ravi Dayal/Permanent Black, 2002)
Pico Iyer, The Global Soul (Bloomsbury, 2000)
Akshaya Kumar, Poetry, Politics and Culture: Essays on Indian Texts and Contexts (Routledge, 2009)
Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found (Viking, 2004)
Pankaj Mishra, Temptations of the West (Picador/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006)
Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English (Oxford, 2000)
V. S. Naipaul, India: A Million Mutinies Now (Heinemann, 1990)
Ira Pande, Diddi: My Mother’s Voice (Penguin, 2005)
Leila Seth, On Balance (Viking, 2003)
Abraham Verghese, My Own Country (Phoenix, 1994)
Literary/Cultural Magazines & Webzines
Atlas, Biblio, Book Review, Caravan, Chandrabhaga, Civil Lines, Hindu Literary Review, Indian Literature, International Gallerie, Kavya Bharati, Kritya, Little Magazine, Muse India, New Quest, Poetry International Web, Talking Poetry, and others.
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