|
|
|
Recommended Reading
- Colonial
literature includes Rudyard Kipling's Kim
and Plain Tales from the Hills, and
EM Forster's A Passage to India.
- The
post-colonial Indian novel par excellence
is Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children,
though Vikram Seth's suitcase-sized A
Suitable Boy runs a close second. In
the past decade, a swag of Indian authors
writing in English have achieved international
recognition. They include Rohinton Mistry,
Shashi Tharoor and Arundhati Roy. The delightful
novels of RK Narayan are evidence that Indian
literary talent in English is nothing particularly
new.
- Worthy
travelogues include Paul Theroux's The
Great Railway Bazaar and Alexander Frater's
delightful Chasing the Monsoon. William
Dalrymple explored Delhi in City of Djinns
and Geoffrey Moorhouse took the plunge in
Kolkata in Calcutta - A City Revealed.
- Commentaries
on India almost form a publishing sub-genre
of their own, and provide travellers with
some of the best insights. They include
VS Naipaul's acerbic An Area of Darkness
and India - A Wounded Civilisation
and the more mature A Million Mutinies
Now; James Cameron's insightful An
Indian Summer; Mark Tully's No Full
Stops In India; and John Keay's Into
India.
- The
two-volume Pelican History of India
is a dry but comprehensive historical treatment.
More readable accounts of specific chapters
of Indian history include Christopher Hibbert's
The Great Mutiny - India 1857, Plain
Tales from the Raj edited by Charles
Allen, Tariq Ali's The Nehrus & the
Gandhis and the sensationalist potboiler
Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins
& Dominique Lapierre.
- The
Hindu holy books, The Upanishads
and The Bhagavad Gita are available
in English translations. Hinduism
by KM Sen is a blissfully brief and to-the-point
introduction to India's major religion.
A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology
& Religion will help unravel who's
who in the Hindu cosmology. Anyone tempted
to don a dhoti and go looking for spiritual
salvation will save themselves a lot of
heartache by reading Gita Mehta's witty
Karma Kola.
back
to top
|
|
