A Passage to India
Books About India and Indian-Americans

Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen
Cranes’ Morning. Ballantine, 1994, 1993.
In the Indian village of Mohurpukur, Vikran Sen, the appearance of Vikram Sen--a noted playwright just released from a Calcutta prison after serving a sentence for the part he played in his wife’s suicide, is a harbinger of change for an eccentric, but traditional family with troubles of its own. A luminous fable. By the same author: Daughters of the House. Ballantine, 1993.

Samina Ali
Madras on Rainy Days. FSG, 2004.
At as the time of her arranged marriage to an Indian man she barely knows, approaches, Layla, who finds herself caught between the conventions of East and West, Muslim and Hindu, tries to abort the baby she is carrying by an American boyfriend. But her new husband, Sameer, has secrets of his own.

Aniruddha Bahal
Bunker 13. FSG, 2003.
As the tensions between India and Pakistan escalate, Minty Mehta, a cynical, thrill-seeking journalist who writes about military affairs for an Indian newsmagazine, embroiled in a lethal game of intrigue, drug-smuggling, weapons dealing, and guerilla fighting on the Kashmiri front.

Rupa Bajwa
The Sari Shop. Norton, 2004.
When he sees how the wealthy in his town live, Sari salesman Ramchand vows to better himself. Then when he sees the deplorable conditions a co-worker lives in, he rails against the inequities prevalent in the world.

Amit Chaudhuri
Freedom Song. Alfred A. Knopf. 1999, 1998.
These three post-colonial short novels, the author draws upon his memories of three places he has called home (Calcutta, Bombay, and Oxford) to weave an intimate and nostalgic portrait of middle-class family life in all its ordinary beauty. By the same author: A New World (2002).

Raj Kamal Jha
The Blue Bedspread. RH, 1999.
After learning that his long-lost his sister has died in a Calcutta hospital, a man accepts her orphaned daughter until the child's adoptive parents can arrive to claim her the next day. He spends the night writing stories for her about his family and the mother the child will never know.

Bharti Kirchner
Darjeeling. St. Martin’s, 2002.
Called home by their grandmother to the family tea plantation, sisters Aloka and Sujata, a tea importer, who are in love with the same man--return to their childhood home in Darjeeling where they try to heal old wounds of bitterness and anger. By the same author: Vegetarian Burgers (1996), Shiva Dancing (1998), Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discovery (2003).

Amulya Malladi
A Breath of Fresh Air. Ballantine, 2002.
A survivor of the catastrophic gas leak that devastated Bhopal, India, Anjali suffers through the loss of neighbors and family and the breakup of her marriage, but she finds new happiness in her remarriage to a loving professor and a successful career as a teacher. By the same author: The Mango Season (2003), Serving Crazy with Curry (2004), and Song of the Cuckoo Bird (2006).

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The Cat Who Came In from the Cold. Ballantine, 2004.
In ancient India, a cat named Billie makes his way through the countryside, enjoying his freedom, but when the holiday season approaches, Billie finds himself alone until he is drawn into the lives of a happy and contented family.

Ameena Meer
Bombay Talkie. High Risk, 1994.
American-born Sabah's parents convince her to visit India, and she is thrust into the unraveling lives of an American-born friend, now married to an Indian and that of her famous movie star uncle and his family.

Bharati Mukherjee
Desirable Daughters. Theia, 2002.
Chronicles the journeys of three Brahmin women as they follow divergent paths from their home in Calcutta and a rigid Indian society to seek new lives for themselves on two separate continents. By the same author: Jasmine (1989) and The Tree Bride (2004).

Anita Nair
The Better Man. Picador, 2000.
A middle-aged man returns to the Indian town where he was born determined to confront the demons of his past and transform himself into a person worthy of admiration. By the same author: Ladies Coupé (2004, 2001).

Manjiri Prabhu
The Cosmic Clues. Dell, 2004.
In Pune, India, Sonia Samarth is launching a new kind of detective agency, one that combines investigative techniques with Hindu astrology, but her growing success could plunge her in over her head when it brings her into the orbit of a dangerous international criminal with murderous intentions

John Shors
Beneath a Marble Sky: A Novel of the Taj Mahal. McPherson & Co, 2004.
Tells the story of the eldest daughter of the 17th-century emperor who built the Taj Mahal.

Bapsi Sidhwa
Cracking India. Milkweed, 1991, 1988.
Lenny, the young girl of an affluent family of Lahore in 1947, becomes aware of the religious differences of people around her when her nanny is kidnapped.

Sonia Singh
Bollywood Confidential. Avon, 2005.
Aspiring actress Raveena Rai. Raveena isn't having much luck in Hollywood, so when her agent nabs her a starring role in a Bollywood film, she jumps at the chance and relocates to Bombay.

John Speed
The Temple Dancer. St. Martin's, 2006.
Set in the 17th cenutry, The Temple Dancer tells the sotry of Maya, a high-priced dancer who has been bought for one of the most powerful men in Bijapur and the dangerous obstacles that await her during her journey across the Mogul Empire to her new master. Followed by: Tiger Claws (2007).

Indu Sundaresan
The Twentieth Wife. Pocket, 2002.
set against the exotic backdrop of the Mughal dynasty of sixteenth-century India chronicles the life and times of Mehrunnisa, an intelligent, ambitious, and beautiful young woman who became one of India's legendary heroines Followed by: The Feast of Roses (2003).

Manil Suri
The Death of Vishnu. Norton, 2001.
As Vishnu lies dying on the staircase he inhabits, his neighbors argue over who will pay for an ambulance. Each neighbor has his or her own drama: Mr. Jalal is searching for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja longs for the wife he lost; and Kavita Asrani is planning to elope. This story becomes a metaphor for the social and religious divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the soul's progress through the various stages of existence.

Thrity Umrigar
The Space Between Us. Morrow, 2005.
In modern Bombay, where the differences between class and the sexes are still prevalent, Parsi, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife in Bombay and Bhima is her domestic servant, learn that they have more in common than they imagine. they suffer equally the abuse of men, the loss of love, and the joys and sorrows of motherhood.

R. V. Vernede
The Enchanted Loom. Gerrards Cross, 1995.
A modern spin on the Arabian Nights.

Novels About the British in India

Thalassa Ali
A Singular Hostage. Bantam, 2002.
In a land of exotic splendor, a young Englishwoman finds herself guardian of an orphan child believed by a dying maharajah to be endowed with magical gifts. It is a role that will take her on a perilous journey into a kingdom's walled city to protect a child she doesn't know from a culture she doesn't understand. By the same author: A Beggar at the Gate. Bantam, 2004.

Charlotte Bacon
There is Room for You. FSG, 2004.
An independent young New Yorker heads for India after her father dies and her husband leaves her for a younger woman, but not before her mother Rose, an Englishwoman, hands her a manuscript of her childhood in the British Raj.

E. M. Forster
A Passage to India. Harcourt, 1924.
Two women come to Chandrapore, India, and their lack of understanding of the culture causes one of them to make an unjust accusation against an innocent doctor.

Katy Gardner
Losing Gemma. Riverhead, 2002.
Two young women head off for an adventure-filled backpacking trip through India, but a fateful visit to a secluded shrine spells disaster, and only one of the two will return home.

Linda Holman
The Linnet Bird. Crown, 2005.
Born into poverty and sold into prostitution at the age of eleven, Linny Gow uses her wits to reinvent herself as a proper Victorian lady and joins the "fishing fleet" of poor young women of good birth who sail for India to find husbands.

Victoria Holt
The India Fan. Doubleday, 1988.
After plain but sensible Drusilla helps her deal with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, beautiful Lavinia pays her back by stealing her beau. Events take them both to India where the Sepoy Rebellion endangers their lives.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Heat and Dust. H&R, 1975
A young English woman journeys to India to reconstruct the behavior of her grandfather's first wife, Olivia, who left husband and friends in 1923 out of love for an Indian prince.

M. M. Kaye
The Far Pavillions. Griffin, 1997, 1978.
Between the Mutiny of 1857 and the second Afghan war, Ashton Pelham-Martyn lives in India where, while serving as a secret agent, he loves an Indian princess

Allan Mallinson
Honorable Company. Bantam, 2000.
A representative of the East India Company, Captain Matthew Hervey discovers peril and adventure during his mission to Chintalpore, an embattled Indian city.

V. S. Naipaul
Magic Seeds. Knopf, 2004.
In his early forties, Willie Chandran joins an underground movement in India, but seven years of revolutionary campaigns--and several years in jail--convince him to return to England.

Indra Singha
The Death of Mr. Love. Morrow, 2004.
London bookseller Bhalu journeys with long-time friend, Phoebe, to his childhood home in India to solve a mystery that destroyed the lives of their mothers, a shared quest that pits them against an unexpectedly powerful adversary.

Carolyn Slaughter
A Black Englishman. FSG, 2004.
Set during the tumultuous decade following World War I, this novel tells of a young woman fleeing the ravages of the war enters into a passionate but dangerous relationship with an Indian doctor.

A Passage to America:
The Indian-American Experience

Kavita Daswani
For Matrimonial Purposes. Putnam, 2003.
When their search for a suitable husband for their daughter ends in failure, Anju’s desperate parents agree to let her try her luck in America. That, too, proves fruitless, so when the now 33-year-old fashion publicist returns to Bombay to attend a family wedding in Bombay, her relatives redouble their efforts to marry her off according to Indian customs. By the same author: The Village bride of Beverly Hills (2004).

Chitra Banerjee Divalaruni
Queen of Dreams. Doubleday, 2004.
Rakhi, a young California artist with no understanding of her Indian heritage struggles with the Starbucks that threatens to close her struggling little tea shop and the accidental death of her mother, who had the ability to share and interpret the dreams of others.

Sohrab Homi Fracis
Ticket to Minto: Stories of India and America. Univ. of Iowa, 2001.
Stories examining what it means to be both Indian and American and the struggle when one is expected to be one or the other.

Jhumpa Lahrir
The Namesake. HM, 2003
A novel covering several generations of the Ganguli family across three decades, focuses on the divide between Indian immigrants and their Americanized children. By the same author: Interpreter of Maladies (HM, 1999), winner of the 2000 Pulitzer prize.

Tanuja Desai Hidier
Born Confused. Scholastic, 2002.
Dimple Lala, a 17-year-old student who is interested in photography, tries very hard to blend in but it’s tough since she is not Indian enough for the Indians and not American enough for her American friends. Her life gets even more complicated when her parents introduce her to a nice Indian boy.

Sonia Singh
Goddess for Hire. Avon Trade, 2004.
Humorous tale about a thoroughly Americanized hip chick named Maya who discovers that she is the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali.

Feed Your Need to Read:
Books About India

Rachel Manija Brown
All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India. Rodale, 2005.

Alain Danielou
A Brief History of India. Inner Traditions, 2003.

Narenda Jadhav
Untouchables: One Family’s Triumph Over the Caste System in Modern India. Scribner, 2005.

S. Mitra Kalita
Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America. Rutgers, 2003.

Edward Luce
In Spite Of The Gods: The Strange Rise Of Modern India. Doubleday, 2007.

Shashi Thaoor
India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond. Arcade, 2006.

Stanley Albert Wolpert
India. Univ. Of CA, 2005.