By: JurmoloyaRava
Author: By Amish Tripathy
Plot: India is beset with divisions, resentment and poverty. The people hate their rulers. They despise their corrupt and selfish elite. Chaos is just one spark away. Outsiders exploit these divisions. Raavan, the demon king of Lanka, grows increasingly powerful, sinking his fangs deeper into the hapless Sapt Sindhu.
Two powerful tribes, the protectors of the divine land of India, decide that enough is enough. They need a Savior desperately now. They begin their search.
Much to their surprise, they found an abandoned baby in a field. Protected by a vulture from a pack of murderous wolves. Ruler of Mithila, a powerless kingdom, ignored by all adopted the girl. Nobody believes this child will amount too much. But they are wrong. For she is no ordinary girl. She is Sita.
Author: Shilpa Raj
Plot: Saved by her grandmother from being killed at birth for having been born a female, Shilpa’s life took many unexpected turns and twists through her early years. She faced abandonment by her mother, the formidable constraints placed on her by her family, and the barbs of village elders bound by hundreds of years of oppressive practices and customs that subjugate women. Shilpa is torn between the contrasting lives she leads: one of servitude and injustice experienced by her family; the other of opportunity and empowerment offered by a good education in a school started by a philanthropist.
Just when all seems settled, an unforeseen death under mysterious circumstances shatters whatever stability remains in her life. Pulled in opposite directions, and torn between despair and dreams, Shilpa finally makes a choice for her future. Is she strong enough to stand up to the people she loves, and pursue what she wants?
At its heart, The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter is about hope when all seems lost. Written with raw honesty and grit, this is a deeply moving memoir of a young girl confronting her ‘untouchable’ status in a caste-based society, and her aspirations for modernity.
3. Shifting Sands
Author: Radha Venuprasad
Plot: Shifting Sands is a collection of short stories about relationships — not only between men and women but between families, extended families and even cultures. Most of the stories are rooted in the culture and traditions of the Nairs of Kerala, but any reader can identify with these well-told tales because the building blocks of all relationships are universal.
Some of the life situations central to the stories may not be acknowledged, much less talked about, even in this ‘liberal’ age, but Radha Venuprasad discusses them frankly and with sensitivity.
All the stories revolve around strong people who are not afraid to be themselves. There is Renu, who decided to keep her love child. But at what price? There is Shiva, who, despite his commitment to his wife of many years and their children, found himself drawn towards and taking responsibility for a beleaguered young woman. Then there is Dhruva, an affluent, gifted doctor with a secret, Aruna, for whom the stars foretold a violent end, and Ammu, Markanday and Seema, whose lives intermingle and turn conventions upside-down. Read also about Anita, whose tragic past intrudes into her idyllic present, about Minikutty, a chip off the old block, and how Gopala Menon unwittingly sets off a chain of events that shake the very foundations of his ancient family when he lets a young writer living in a house on his sprawling premises.
4. Bombay Fever: Medical Thriller
Author: Sidin Vadukut
Plot: Where did it come from? In the courtyard of a Hindu temple in Switzerland, a woman collapses in the arms of a visiting Indian journalist, her body reduced to a puddle of blood. It is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. How does it kill?
Three months later, all over Mumbai, men, women and children are ravaged by a disease that strikes with deceptive mildness before swiftly condemning patients to a gruesome death. Who will it hit next? As the rogue microbe wreaks its bloody havoc—slaying rich and poor, young and old—chaos ensues. Thousands try to flee the city for their lives. Including the most powerful man in the country. Can anyone stop this happening?
All that stands between the city and apocalypse is a ragged team of doctors, civil servants and scientists. But is their intervention too little, too late, is there anything else?
Author: Simanta & Sushmita Das
Plot: The Tough Gets Going… Tempestuous Sea….Divine Interference….A Fallen Hero !!! Shekhar Dev, a renowned architect, on a perpetual high, passionate about the waters is lulled to eternal sleep at Puri…. premeditated or sheer accident?
The story unfolds when Roshan, Shekhar’s son discovers the contents of his father’s locker. A father, idolized by him. A father held in awe by him is agonized by the truth that even the deepest secret of one’s life knows how to loom into visibility. The thrill is held right until the end to make one realize that the tyranny of circumstances hits us with its icy claws especially when we are in perfect carpe diem!!!
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Plot: The Palace of Illusions is an award-winning novel penned by famous novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The book is a rendition of the Hindu epic Mahabharata from Draupadi’s (Panchaali’s) point of view. The writer elaborates the Mahabharata with modern twist as it narrates the story from the perspective of Draupadi. The story takes us to a world that includes half-history, half-myth and full magic. The novel is a completely human novel about a woman born in this patriarchal society, the world full of agony and the ever manipulating hands of destiny.
The story reflects the facts about Draupadi’s life, like born from agni or fire of yagna, friendless childhood, where her adorable brother is her only true friend; her complex friendship with the mysterious Krishna; to marriage, maternity and her secret attraction to the undisclosed man who is her husbands’ most dangerous opponent.
Author: Nidhi Chanani
Plot: Pashmina is a YA graphic novel featuring Indian American teenager Priyanka. Her skin colour sets her apart from those around her, but if that wasn’t bad enough, she’s a complete nerd living in a single-parent household. She doesn’t have the money her classmates in Orange County do; she feels ostracized for so many reasons. Priyanka’s mother, an immigrant from India, is struggling to teach her daughter about her culture. It’s a story about culture, about women, and about a mother and daughter trying to connect — all in what promises to be a gorgeous graphic novel form.
8. No One Can Pronounce My Name
Author: Rakesh Satyal
Plot: Being an immigrant, or a child of immigrants, can provide a lifetime’s worth of confusion and identity clashes. What is it to be Indian American? That’s what Rakesh Satyal examines in his latest novel, focusing on a group of Indian Americans living outside Cleveland. Not only are they struggling to figure out who they are and what their relationship is with their adopted country, but they are also trying to discern how exactly they fit within their cultural community, and even within their families. Can Indian and American cultural traditions be reconciled, or must one always be sacrificed for the other?
9. The Windfall
Author: Diksha Basu
Plot: Set in modern-day Delhi, Mr and Mrs Jha have just moved from their small apartment to a large house in the upper-class area of Gurgaon. They don’t know what to expect in this new community, and they’re shocked to discover they don’t quite fit in within this extremely wealthy community. This novel has been compared positively to Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, and I’m eager to delve into this story of one family and the questions of where they belong.
A sharply observed tale of social aspiration and anxiety, The Windfall is a thoroughly modern comedy of manners about family, friendship and what it means to belong in a rapidly changing India.
10. No Other World
Author: Rahul Mehta
Plot: From the author of the prize-winning collection Quarantine, an insightful, compelling debut novel set in rural America and India in the 1980s and ’90s, a story about a gay Indian American boy, a family saga about an immigrant family’s struggles to find a sense of belonging, identity, and hope.
As Kiran learns what it is to be a gay Indian boy — later, man — in the United States, his parents navigate their own marital discord, while also struggling to adjust to life in a new country.
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