On 5/28/07, Bharat Shetty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://indianeconomy.org/2006/06/18/ten-best-books-on-india/
My personal favorite writing about India:
* R.K. Narayan. Especially _Swami and Friends_, _Bachelor of Arts_ or
_The Talkative Man_. You being from Mysore MUST read him. And please
pay a visit to the house he lived in on Yadavagiri. Till I read
Narayan for the first time I never knew how simple prose can describe
Indian scenes so beautifully.
* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. With Rushdie I found someone
who could describe India in edgy modern prose.
* Discovery of India by Nehru. However much people tend to blame him
and his politics for the ills of India in the 70's and 80's, I think
he was probably one of the best PMs young India could have had. Also
recommend - a DVD of the TV show _Bharat ek Khoj_ that was based on
Nehru's book.
* Naipaul's India trilogy. In order.
* William Dalrymple's travelogue
* Khushwant Singh's columns for the Illustrated Weekly
Frankly, I found most fiction writers in English in the pre-1980s
boring. This includes the likes of Manohar Malgonkar. And I have not
yet come across a good English translation of any Indian books.
Unfortunately, my ability to read Tamil and Hindi are quite
rudimentary and I am only exposed to Indian literature in local
languages through their English translations.
Thaths
--
Homer: He has all the money in the world, but there's one thing he can't buy.
Marge: What's that?
Homer: (pause) A dinosaur.
-- Homer J. Simpson
Sudhakar Chandra Slacker Without Borders
