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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 us 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. …More

In a small, dusty town in India, Sripathi Rao struggles as a copywriter to keep his family afloat in their crumbling ancestral home. But his mother berates him for not becoming a lawyer, his son prefers social protest to work, his unmarried sister seethes with repressed desire, and his wife, though subservient, blames him for refusing to communicate with their daughter Maya, who defied tradition, rejecting her proper Brahmin fiance for a Caucasian husband . …More

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job. The job takes him to Madna, "the hottest town in India," deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies …More

An epic of exceptional richness and power, "Sacred Games" draws the reader deep into the life of the compelling Sikh detective Sartaj Singh--and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. …More

Sisterly love is the focus of this novel, set in Old Delhi against the backdrop of some of India's most significant historical events, including the death of Gandhi and the malaria epidemic. …More

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2006 Man Booker Prize Winner

The author of the acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard takes readers to the northeastern Himalayas where a rising insurgency in Nepal challenges the old way of life--and opens up a grasping world of conflicting desires. …More

The award-winning author of "The Mistress of Spices" returns with her latest novel. …More

Continuing his "Ibis" trilogy, begun with the Man Booker-shortlisted "Sea of Poppies", Ghosh puts three ships in the midst of a cyclone on the Bay of Bengal. Those aboard eventually meet in Canton's foreign enclave as the Opium Wars get started. …More

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. …More

From the acclaimed author of "A Breath of Fresh Air, this beautiful novel takes us to modern India during the height of the summer's mango season. Heat, passion, and controversy explode as a woman is forced to decide between romance and tradition. . …More

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.. …More

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul's brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas" is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels. . …More

A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, "The Ramayana" is familiar to virtually every Indian. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages.. …More

"A banquet for all the senses," said "Newsweek" of this bestselling and Booker Prize-winning literary novel--a richly textured first book about the tragic decline of one family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love. …More

Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs, and telepathic powers link him with the other children born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. …More

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. …More

Shankar's tale of Gopalakrishnan (Gopu), who at 65 has returned to the small town in southern India where he grew up, resonates with the disappointments and exposed emotions of everyday life and is reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the 'ghost train' arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refuges, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. …More

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, "Animal's People" is by turns a profane, scathingly funny, and piercingly honest tale of a boy so badly damaged by the poisons released during a chemical plant leak that he walks on all fours. …More

Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold: the warring housewives on the first floor, lovesick teenagers on the second, and the quietly grieving widower on the top floor of the building …More

Filled with satisfyingly real characters and glowing with local color, "The Weight of Heaven" is a rare glimpse of a family and a country struggling under pressures beyond their control. …More

The Toss of a Lemon
By Viswanathan, Padma
2008-09 - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
9780151015337 Check our catalog

Spanning the lifetime of one woman, this debut novel offers an intimate look into a Brahmin household. Inspired by her grandmother's stories, Viswanathan masterfully brings to life a profoundly exotic yet utterly recognizable family in the midst of social and political upheaval. …More