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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorFamily Matters
Rohinton Mistry · 478 pages
"The setting is Bombay, mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel, suffering from Parkinson's disease, is the elderly patriarch of a small, discordant family. In a building called Chateau Felicity, he and his two middle-aged stepchildren - Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her just-younger brother, Jal, mild mannered and acquiescent - occupy a once-elegant apartment whose ruin is progressing as rapidly as Narima
The Toss of a Lemon
Padma Viswanathan · 619 pages
In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage. De
The Space Between Us
Thrity Umrigar · 328 pages
Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's house. In Sera Dubash's home, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed to drink. Yet despite being separated from each other by blood and
The Sari Shop
Rupa Bajwa · 240 pages
Young Ramchand rushes through the dusty streets of Amritsar, once again late for work. Chastised by his boss, he takes his place among the cottons and silks of the sari shop, selling yards of cloth to the wealthy and fashionable women of the town. Offered a glimpse of a more opulent world, Ramchand is seduced by the idea that he might somehow better himself. But making dreams real will come at a p
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga · 304 pages
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
The Gift of a Cow: A Translation from the Hindi Novel
Munshi Premchand
A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth · 1,408 pages
The tale of Lata's and her mother's attempts to find a suitable boy, through love or through maternal appraisal. Set in post-independence India and involving the lives of four families, it is also an explanation of a whole continent faced with its first great General Election.
Serious Men
Manu Joseph · 338 pages
"Low-caste Ayyan Mani lives in a Mubai tenement and works in an esteemed research institute as the assistant of top researcher Arvind Acharya. Forever spiteful toward his privileged superiors, Ayyan is deviously mischievous and pulls off a stunt that ends with his half-deaf (but otherwise ordinary) son being proclaimed in the local news as a boy genius. Meanwhile, Arvind is obsessed with proving h
Untouchable
Mulk Raj Anand · 160 pages
With precision, vitality, and a fury that earned him praise as India's Charles Dickens, Mulk Raj Anand recreates in" Untouchable" what it was like to live on the fringes of society in pre-independence India. Bakha, an attractive, proud, and strong young man, is also an Untouchable, the lowest of the low in India's caste system. A sweeper and a toilet-cleaner, he must warn others on the street of h
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Evelyn Waugh · 370 pages
The Death of Vishnu
Manil Suri · 310 pages
"At the opening of this novel, Vishnu, the resident odd-job man, lies dying on the staircase he inhabits, while his neighbors the Pathaks and the Asranis squabble over who will pay for an ambulance. As the action spirals up through the floors of their building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has los
The 3 Mistakes of My Life
Chetan Bhagat · 268 pages
In late-2000, a young boy in Ahmedabad called Govind dreamt of having a business. To accomodate his friends Ish and Omi's passion, they open a cricket shop. Govind's wants to make money and thinks big. Ish is all about nurturing Ali, the batsman with a rare gift. Omi knows his limited capabiltiies and just wants to be with his friends. However, nothing comes easy in a turbulent city. To realize th
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
Philip Roth · 298 pages
Dramatizations of aspects of American life seen through the comic or tragic predicament of American Jews.
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie · 548 pages
A Meeting by the River
Christopher Isherwood · 167 pages
"Two English brothers meet, after a long separation, in India. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, prepares to take his final vows as a Hindu monk. Patrick, a successful publisher with a wife and children in London and a male lover in California, has publicly admired his brother's convictions while privately criticizing his choices. First published in 1967, A Meeting by the River delicately d
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy · 440 pages
Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a liv
The Neon Bible
John Kennedy Toole · 162 pages
The first novel by the Pulizer Prize-winning author of A Confederacy Of Dunces. David is a young boy growing up in a small Southern town in the 1940s. From his porch, David can see the whole valley, including the neon Bible that lights up the sky, emblem of the God-fearing folk who snub his family because Poppa can't afford the church dues.
Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
U.R. Ananthamurthy yu. aar. an0tmuurti · 168 pages
Q & A
Vikas Swarup · 379 pages
When an illiterate waiter takes the top prize on 'Who Will Win a Billion', becoming the biggest quiz show winner in Indian history, is anyone surprised that he is arrested for cheating? But who was to know that 18 years of street-life has equipped him with enough crucial wisdom to send him sailing through with not a single pass?
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier · 248 pages
This book "centres on Vermeer's prosperous household in Delft in the 1660s. The appointment of the quiet, perceptive heroine of the novel, the servant Griet, gradually throws the household into turmoil as Vermeer and Griet become increasingly intimate, an increasingly tense situation that culminates in her working for Vermeer as his assistant, and ultimately sitting for him as a model. Chevalier d
The Guide
R.K. Narayan · 221 pages
Rogue is reluctantly cast in the role of a holy man in this ironic comedy of East Indian life.