The Riches of India

Explore the beauty and rich culture of India through these titles.

	The Hero's Walk: A Novel By Anita Rau Badami, 2001 In a small town in India, Sripathi Rao receives a call that his daughter has been killed in an accident in Canada, leaving him to raise her child. This prize-winning novel--replete with the color, customs, and contradictions of India--is imbued with a sense of family life that is universal.
	Shining Hero Sara Banerji, 2002 In this enchanting novel, which dips luxuriously into the richness of Indian myth and Hindu legend, Sara Banerji takes us on an exhilarating ride from the underworld of Calcutta, to Bollywood, up into the Himalayas, culminating--as the brothers fight for fame and fortune--in a race to the death that only one can win.
	For Matrimonial Purposes By Kavita Daswani, 2003 Anju has grown up in upper-middle-class Bombay, where even in the twenty-first century, arranged marriage is the norm. Her parents have been trying to find a suitable man for her since her late teens. Yet despite their best efforts, Anju remains single. Only then is she able to persuade her parents to let her move to New York, where, she hopes, she will not be viewed as a failure. Making a new life, alone, in the dangerous "Umrica" is a great risk, but Anju also longs for independence and a career. And if the stars align, perhaps she might even find love - on her own terms.
	The House of Blue Mangoes By David Davidar, 2002 Richly emotional and abundant in historical detail, The House of Blue Mangoes is a gripping family chronicle that spans nearly a half century and three generations of the Dorai family as they search for their place in a rapidly changing society.
	The Point of Return: A Novel By Siddhartha Deb, 2003 Set in the remote northeastern hills of India, the story revolves around the father-son relationship of a willful, curious boy, Babu, and Doctor Dam, an enigmatic product of British colonial rule and Nehruvian nationalism. Told in reverse chronological order, the novel examines an India where the ideals that brought freedom from colonial rule are beginning to crack under the pressure of new rebellions and conflicts.
	Fasting, Feasting By Anita Desai, 2000 Fasting, Feasting takes on Desai's greatest theme: the intricate, delicate web of family conflict. It tells the moving story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every extravagant demand, and of her younger brother, Arun, across the world in Massachusetts, bewildered by his new life in college and the suburbs.
	The Inheritance of Loss By Kiran Desai, 2006 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 from a world he has found too messy for justice, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. An Indian-Nepali insurgency erupts in the mountainside forces the pair to consider their colliding interests.
	The Hungry Tide By Amitav Ghosh, 2005 Off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three people from different worlds collide. As the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, they are drawn unawares into the hidden undercurrents of this isolated world, where political turmoil exacts a personal toll that is every bit as powerful as the ravaging tide.
	The Song of Kahunsha By Anosh Irani, 2007 It is January 1993 and Bombay is threatened by terrorism and sectarian violence. Ten-year-old Chamdi has rarely ventured outside his orphanage, and entertains an idyllic fantasy of a paradise he calls Kahunsha, "the city of no sadness." But when he runs away to search for his long-lost father, he is thrust into the chaos of the streets, alone, possessing only the blood-stained cloth he was left in as a baby.
	Darjeeling By Bharti Kirchner, 2002 Novelist and award-winning cookbook author Bharti Kirchner has written a sweeping family saga, a first class fiction about forbidden love and family honor. Set in the mountainous tea plantations of Darjeeling, India and in New York City, Darjeeling is the story of two sisters - Aloka and Sujata - long separated by their love for Pranab, an idealistic young revolutionary.
	Interpreter of Maladies: Stories By Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999 The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.
	The Mango Season By Amulya Malladi, 2003 Every young Indian leaving the homeland for the United States is given the following orders by their parents. Don't eat any cow (It's still sacred!); don't go out too much; save (and save, and save) your money; and, most important, do not marry a foreigner. Priya Rao left India when she was twenty to study in the U.S., and she's never been back. Now, seven years later, she's out of excuses. She has to return and give her family the news. She's engaged to Nick Collins, a kind, loving American man. It's going to break their hearts.
	The Romantics: A Novel By Pankaj Mishra, 2000 On the banks of the Ganges, the holy city of Benares groans and heaves along the fault line where modern India presses against its living past. Into this city comes in all innocence young Samar to complete his university studies and take the civil-service examinations that will determine his future. An uprooted Brahman, bearing the responsibilities of his caste but shorn of its privileges, Samar, obsessed by the intellectual culture of the West but shaped by ancient obligations due his ancestors, finds himself suspended between conflicted worlds.
	A Fine Balance: A Novel by Rohinton Mistry, 1995 With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
	The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy, 1997 The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family, The God of Small Things follows twins Rahel and Esthappen as they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. When their English cousin arrives on a visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever.
	The Splendor of Silence By Indu Sundaresan, 2006 Internationally bestselling author Sundaresan pens her first novel set in the 20th century, merging her Indian and American inspirations into a heartrending tale of tragic love and clashing cultures in a time of war.
	The Death of Vishnu By Manil Suri, 2001 Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building 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. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, readers ponder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe.
	The Space Between Us By Thrity Umrigar, 2005 Set in modern-day India and witnessed through two compelling and achingly real women, the novel shows how the lives of the rich and the poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and vividly captures how the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of class and culture.
	The Assassin's Song By M.G. Vassanji, 2007 In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag - the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi - begins to tell the story of his family and the shrine now destroyed. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the Shrine. But he longs to be "just ordinary". When he is accepted at Harvard, he can't resist the opportunity to go finally "into the beating heart of the world." After tragedy strikes he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.