Here are 100 books that Ib's Endless Search for Satisfaction fans have personally recommended if you like
Ib's Endless Search for Satisfaction.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I started writing fiction and writing aboutfiction at about the same time. My novels and stories tend to be about solitary characters pulled into the maelstrom that is contemporary Indian urban life and trying to make sense of it. I’ve always believed that to be an effective observer of your society you need to stay in tune with what your peers are doing and the last two decades in which I’ve been writing and publishing have been some of the most exciting for Indian fiction in general.
Crimes again women are discussedad nauseam in the media but this was the first time I read a novel that made the subject painfully uncomfortable for me by telling the story not in the voice of the victim but through the reflections of a witness who probes everyone’s culpability, including her own. This powerful debut shines a very revealing light on what it means to be a comfortably middle-class Indian.
‘In Mukta Sathe we have a new voice that displays a deep understanding of both the old and the young, of their complex relationships, and of how crime and punishment play out under our flawed judicial system. A Patchwork Family is a novel that I found difficult to put down.’ —Shanta Gokhale, author, columnist and translator
Young and idealistic, Janaki is eager to serve the cause of justice as a lawyer. Her only confidant is Ajoba, an elderly friend of her grandfather’s, who supported her throughout her childhood. They are unrelated by blood or marriage ties, but they have both…
I started writing fiction and writing aboutfiction at about the same time. My novels and stories tend to be about solitary characters pulled into the maelstrom that is contemporary Indian urban life and trying to make sense of it. I’ve always believed that to be an effective observer of your society you need to stay in tune with what your peers are doing and the last two decades in which I’ve been writing and publishing have been some of the most exciting for Indian fiction in general.
A most affecting historical novel set in 19th century Assam as the British colonialists sought to push deeper into the country. I’ve read so many accounts of the early encounters between native and foreigner but what makes this one rare is Blackburn’s careful and tender individualising of his characters so that they can both be ranged against each other and yet in some human and mysterious and ultimately tragic way also be friends.
As the British Raj begins its expansion towards Tibet, the remote Apatani valley on the Indo-Tibetan border becomes a flashpoint. George Taylor, an up-and-coming officer in the Indian Civil Service, leads the first expedition into the valley and recommends setting
up a base nearby, as the Apatanis are a ‘friendly tribe’. During the expedition, a tenuous bond is established between him and Gyati,
the Apatani shaman who has long been anxious about the halyang outsiders creeping closer and closer to the ordered world of the valley. But this bond cannot survive. The increased British presence and
I started writing fiction and writing aboutfiction at about the same time. My novels and stories tend to be about solitary characters pulled into the maelstrom that is contemporary Indian urban life and trying to make sense of it. I’ve always believed that to be an effective observer of your society you need to stay in tune with what your peers are doing and the last two decades in which I’ve been writing and publishing have been some of the most exciting for Indian fiction in general.
This is a marvellous novel about an area in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas that is not far from where I grew up. It’s a story about people and nature, how the relationship is at once very elemental for those who live off the land, as well as very convoluted and destructive because it’s driven by greed, politics, and fear. The narrator is a visitor to the region, looking to solve a mystery from his past, and this device of the curious outsider looking in works really well to make the whole place come to life.
Description Shaken by the news of his mother’s death, a man leaves his job in Delhi and returns to Assam. Twenty-five years ago, his father, a forest officer here, was found shot dead in his jeep. With the passing of his mother, the man learns new and startling details of his father’s life, and trying to reclaim an entire life suddenly made unfamiliar, he starts digging into events from far back in time, visiting places where his father had served, in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. But the forests he had once roamed as a boy with his father…
I started writing fiction and writing aboutfiction at about the same time. My novels and stories tend to be about solitary characters pulled into the maelstrom that is contemporary Indian urban life and trying to make sense of it. I’ve always believed that to be an effective observer of your society you need to stay in tune with what your peers are doing and the last two decades in which I’ve been writing and publishing have been some of the most exciting for Indian fiction in general.
This slim novel I read in one sitting not because, in the way of conventional thrillers, one hopes for a decent resolution, but because the story is so devastating. Its very hopelessness somehow pulls one in. Pandey has written a very gentle account of the very brutal forces ranged against one couple who have committed what can be a crime in modern India – marrying outside one’s caste and religion.
This is like Kafka in Deoria. Or Camus in the cow belt. But more accurate to say that Legal Fiction is an urgent, literary report about how truth goes missing in our land. I read it with a racing heart.
-- Amitava Kumar, author of The Lovers
Chandan Pandey goes looking for the story that lurks just out of sight, getting under the skin of news headlines and extracting a story that is as compelling as it is devastating.
-- Annie Zaidi, author of Prelude to a Riot
Chandan Pandey has written a brilliant, gripping political novel. Legal Fiction is…
When I was growing up, I longed to see myself and my family represented in ways that were not demeaning. Hollywood movies showed Asian women as passive victims or hypersexualized “dragon ladies.” Depictions of Asian men were even fewer—they were mostly the enemy soldiers in the background of movies about the American war in Vietnam. I became a writer to try to correct these grossly flattened stereotypes. I am now the author of 11 books, and recipient of an American Book Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, and Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman.
This collection features South Asian characters from the present to different times in history. Bhuvaneswar’s prose is gorgeous, her dialogue snappy. From a woman feeling guilty for having an affair with her friend’s husband to an enslaved woman in Renaissance-era Portugal to a queer woman who’d rather move to another country than come out to her parents, Bhuvaneswar’s characters are smart, self-aware, flawed, and fascinating.
Best Books of 2018 Kirkus Reviews (debut and short fiction categories)
Best Books of 2018, Entropy Magazine
A Book Club selection for The Wing, Rebel Women's Lit and Bookish.com
35 over 35 Debut Fiction Award
Finalist for the 2019 PEN American Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
"Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor." -Lauren Groff, author of Florida
I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
This is my favorite book on Indian/Hindu goddesses. Even after all these years, I believe it to be the erudite and accessible book that portrays the complexity of goddesses and their relationships with devotees. Each time I re-read the book, I glean additional insights into India, Hinduism, and the ways that the sacred feminine shapes the lives of people in the Northeast region of India.
The worship of Devi (the Goddess) is one of the most vigorous and visible religious phenomena in northwest India today. This study uses interviews, participant observations, and textual analysis to explore the nature of the Goddess and her devotees' experience of her.
I have had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but I did not train as an ecologist. An increasing concern about the environment, and the people more adversely affected by ecological degradation, made me switch careers early. I have worked on issues around conservation, land and forest rights of indigenous communities, and on the importance of nature in cities. Today I am an educator with a responsibility to communicate not only about environmental issues, but why it is a priority for communities in India. I am proud to be a part of the community of women writers on the environment in India whose voices and experiences need to be heard.
Who among us has not looked at our published academic paper and felt that tinge of sadness at so much left unsaid? This book is about all that is left unsaid—an entertaining account of the many stories behind the data collected for research that does not make it into our sanitised published papers. Traversing different parts of North India, two young women carrying out conservation research encounter not just nature but also opinionated men, corrupt officials, and a bureaucracy that worked at a frustrating snail’s pace. The accounts in the book are hilarious and relatable to anyone who has done field research, ecological or otherwise in India, where data collection is interspersed with memorable and amusing everyday conversations with a range of people. This is a book I would have loved to write myself. And I hope I still can someday, in my own way.
Thanks to access to a good community library, I developed an interest in history from the age of seven. My interest in India grew when I married Indian-born Atam Vetta. After teaching, I set up a business and was director of Oxford Antiques Centre. In 1998, while chair of the Thames Valley Art and Antique Dealers Association, I was invited to become the art and antiques writer for The Oxford Times. That was how my freelance writing career began but since 2016 I have concentrated on writing fiction and poetry but make occasional contributions to The Madras Courier.
If you already know a lot about India and are interested in an unusual insight into the role of temples in the history, culture, architecture, and myths of the subcontinent, then this is for you. It will also introduce you to thirteen writers who include journalists, academics, and authors. Each one was asked to write about one temple, recounting its origins and the mythology and history surrounding it. It’s beautifully illustrated by Mistunee Choudhury. You can enhance the experience by googling the locations. It has introduced me to some must-see places to go on my want to visit list. I visited the unforgettable temples of Khajuraho and they appear in my own book.
The great temples of the Indian subcontinent are uniquely fascinating spaces. Steeped in mythology and history, they are windows into a complex, often contrary culture. Where the Gods Dwell delves into the ‘(hi)stories’—history and mythology—of thirteen architectural marvels that have inspired awe, and not only in the hearts of the faithful.
Every essay in this book is an intriguing mix of historical detail, mythological narrative and architectural commentary, supplementing and complementing each other to tell a story that is more than the sum of its parts. From Pashupatinath in Nepal to the Nallur Kandaswamy in Sri Lanka, the Kamakhya in…
I have been trying to understand India’s evolution especially its economic path for the last half-century— by reading, traveling, and writing on aspects of that evolution. Originally this started with the Cold War concern about how a democracy would navigate using a democratic political system. So I took appropriate courses in college and graduate school, worked in India in the Peace Corps, and then spent a little under a decade teaching about it a doing research. For the following five decades I have continued my interest and publishing and studying. Whether I have understood much is for others to determine but these are my five book nominees.
It manages to leverage the world history of coping with pandemics over the last couple of centuries by focusing on India’s Experience with them. A readable academic book with frequent reference to the author's own life experience. It uses the history of public health to illuminate all aspects of the nation’s history
From lockdowns to lock-ups, viruses to vaccination, the movement of people to the movement of bowels, from rats to cats, and more, The Age of Pandemics chronicles the many facets of the cholera, plague and influenza pandemics, which claimed over 70 million lives between 1817 and 1920, with India being the epicentre in all these episodes. A time otherwise known for the worldwide spread of the industrial revolution, imperialism and globalization, the period between the early nineteenth century and the early twentieth century was also the age of pandemics. This book documents the scale of devastation, the likely causes and…
Abi Oliver is a pen name as my real name is Annie Murray—I write under both names. My first book, A New Map of Love, set in the 1960s, featured an older woman who had been born in India. She developed into such a character—a bit of an old trout to be truthful—that I wanted to tell her story. It also tapped into my family’s many connections with India and the fact that I have travelled a lot there. I finally got to travel, with my oldest daughter, and stay in one of the tea gardens in Assam—a wonderful experience.
"India will sing like a bird out of its cage when she is free," says one of the characters in this wonderfully engaging book. Times of transition interest me and this book is set during the early part of Indian Independence, when everyone was trying to find a new identity and way of living, especially Victoria, one of the three main characters who is Eurasian, or as we would now say, mixed race. She is torn between the two sides of her heritage. Some of the language is shocking in our times but it is a fascinating story of people caught up in a country’s re-birth. It is also a tender love story. It’s a great way to get a feel of that period of upheaval.
Bhowani Junction is set in the wake of the partition of India, as the British prepare to withdraw from the newly independent country. Evoking the tensions and conflicts that accompanied the birth of modern India, the characters struggle to find their place in the new India that is emerging. In the last hectic days of the British Raj, Victoria has to choose between marrying a British Army officer or a Sikh, Ranjit, as she struggles to find her place in the new, independent India.
One of John Masters' seven novels which followed several generations of the Savage family serving in…
