India Readings

I'm following Louise's example and mentioning a few of the novels about India that I've read over the past few months. I have a long way to go on the Recommended India Reading list, but this is a start. I'll start with Shantaram, where first Louise yelled at me repeatedly for not already having read this book. Then she gave me a copy of the book for my birthday before she left in Delhi. Figuring I had to read it or risk the further wrath of Louise, I finally started reading it in January. Good thing I did. I absolutely loved it.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Shantaram tells the story of Lindsey, an Australian convict, who escapes from prison and flees to Bombay. There, he lives in a slum, works on the black market, spends time in a Maharashtrian village. Learns to speak Hindi and Marathi fluently, open a slum clinic and becomes enmeshed in the Bombay underworld. It was a thrilling read and one I would highly recommend. And it's being turned into a Hollywood film to be release in 2008, starring Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. This novel was the 2006 Man Booker Prize and is set in a town at the foothills of the Himalayas, Kalimpong. It tells the story of several characters: Jemubhai, a miserable former Indian judge, Sai: the judge's orphaned teenager granddaughter, their cook, Biju: the cook's son who is illegally living in New York City, Gyan: Sai's Nepali math tutor, and several other characters in the Himalayan town. This is a good novel, but not nearly as stimulating and hard to put down as Shantaram was.

Others on the list include William Dalrymple's City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, Dominique Lapierre's City of Joy, and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. The only problem with the last one is that Oprah got to it first and it's a Oprah's Book Club book.