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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorThe 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
Who do you think you are?
Alice Munro · 224 pages
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
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 Henna Artist (First Time Trade)
Alka Joshi · 368 pages
The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai · 336 pages
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 judgeʼs 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 Desaiʼs brilliant novel, pu
A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry · 713 pages
A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's eagerly awaited second novel and follows his critically acclaimed Such a Long Journey, the book that won three prestigious literary awards in 1991. Set in India in the mid-1970s, A Fine Balance is a richly textured novel which sweeps the reader up into its special world. Large in scope, the narrative focuses on four unlikely people who come together in a flat
Bleak House
Charles Dickens · 815 pages
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton · 348 pages
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
Arranged Marriage: Stories
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni · 320 pages
Them
Joyce Carol Oates · 508 pages
"A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, Them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American family - broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The nove
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 Casual Vacancy
J.K. Rowling · 512 pages
When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is no
Bombay Stories
Saadat Hasan Manto · 288 pages
This sometimes shocking collection of short stories about life in mid-20th-century Bombay captures the city's seedy underbelly of prostitutes, pimps and gangsters as well as the aspiring writers and actors who arrived looking for fame.
Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri · 352 pages
These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers,
Howards End
E.M. Forster · 320 pages
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece
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
Malgudi Days
R.K. Narayan · 250 pages
Introducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story.” Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan’s imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human exper
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Katherine Boo · 256 pages
The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts
Bel-Ami
Guy de Maupassant · 303 pages
.I Quand la caissiere lui eut rendu la monnaie de sa piece de cent sous, Georges Duroy sortit du restaurant. Comme il portait beau, par nature et par pose d'ancien sous-officier, il cambra sa taille, frisa sa moustache d'un geste militaire et familier, et jeta sur les dineurs attardes un regard rapide et circulaire, un de ces regards de joli garcon qui s'etendent comme des coups d'epervier. Les fe