I have always loved ‘whodunit’ mysteries and the crime genre. When I was in my early teens, I read a couple of dozen Agatha Christie books and was hooked from then on. I was determined to tackle this genre for my 7th novel and (as with several previous novels) wanted to incorporate historic elements into the story because of my fascination for social history. My objective was to immerse the reader in the mid-sixties and then layer in the murder mystery element. The books I’ve recommended are all very different but offer a good grounding in the genre.
A Murder at Malabar Hill is a murder mystery that offers a fascinating insight into Indian culture in the 1920s.
The story takes place in Bombay, where the character of Perveen Mistry is the city's first female lawyer. The cultural and social challenges she faces as a woman in a male-dominated profession are woven into the story, as well as the complexities of India's caste system.
Through Perveen's interactions with her clients, we learn about the intricacies of Islamic and Hindu marriage laws, the importance of family honour, and the difficulties faced by women in traditional Indian society. I found this book fascinating, and with the wonderful descriptions of food, clothing, and architecture, felt transported to the streets of Bombay.
Winner and Top Pick of the 2019 American Library Association Reading List for Mystery Winner of the 2019 Mary Higgins Clark Award Winner of the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel Winner of the the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel Finalist for the 2019 Shamus Award Finalist for the 2019 Harper Lee Legal Fiction Prize
'Marvelously plotted, richly detailed . . . This is a first-rate performance inaugurating a most promising series.' The Washington Post
'Perveen Mistry has all the pluck you want in a sleuthing lawyer, as well as a not-so-surprising - but decidedly welcome -…
I grew up in Nepal, where politics was part and parcel of everyday life. During my childhood and teenage years, we lived under a monarchy, where the king was supreme. Yet there was always a simmering tension between what was a mildly authoritarian rule and what the people’s aspirations were. As I grew into adulthood, Nepal saw a massive uprising that ushered in a multiparty system, then later, after a bloody Maoist civil war, the overthrow of the crown. Yet, even amidst all these political upheavals, people do live quotidian lives, and the space between these two seemingly disparate things has always felt like a literary goldmine to me.
As an author from Nepal, I have learned the most from Rohinton Mistry than any other South Asian writer about how to “translate” the landscape and language of my country for an international audience. Such a Long Journey was the first novel that taught me how to integrate the social and political seamlessly into the psychological makeup of my protagonist—in an English that is uniquely local. In the novel, Gustad Noble, a devoted family man, gets snared into the deception and corruption of the government under Indira Gandhi. It’s a riveting read, and Mistry is superb with vivid descriptions. That the book was banned in certain conservative circles in India makes it even more of a gem.
It is Bombay in 1971, the year India went to war over what was to become Bangladesh. A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and…
I was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata for most of my life, and am an educator and poet who lives in the US. I am a Bene Israel Jew from India. As a child, I was fascinated by all kinds of literature, mythology, folktales, and stories. I have been influenced by everything around me. My passion for literature probably inspired me to become a teacher and later a writer who is constantly exploring, creating, re-imagining, and evolving. My books are about the immigrant experience, displacement, racism, women’s issues, nature, the animal kingdom, to name a few. But within these themes, I also explore identity and belonging, death, loss and recovery.
This nonfiction book has groundbreaking research and details about the ancient community of the Bene Israel of Western India. It has laid the foundation for researchers from all over the world who studied (or currently study) the Jews of India, and in particular the Bene Israel, their history, customs, and culture.
It is a book rich with facts and discussions and superbly educative. It is a book I return to often, not just to read and enjoy, but to refer to for my own history and my writing, especially for my recent book, where I trace my own ancestry and explore my childhood in Mumbai and Kolkata.
B.J. Israel’s books are a globally respected and recognized resource. His works appear in the Judaic Encyclopedia. He is the author of several milestone books, containing his research on the three best-known Jewish communities of India, the Bene Israel of the Konkan, the…
The Bene Israel are a small community of Jews that have lived for many centuries on the west coast of India, just south of Bombay, in complete isolation from their co-religionists elsewhere. The studies in this volume range over the history, religious evolution, some social and demographic aspects of the life of the community; its reunification with world Jewry since the eighteenth century; and its strong Indian character, in relation to its assimilation in Israel. The Introduction provides a comprehensive historical account of India’s three Jewish communities – the Cochinis, the Bene Israel and the Baghdadis –their relations and interactions.…
I love cities and I teach about them. I was born in the capital of Sofia, Bulgaria, and landed in the US (mostly by chance) in 1993. Spent most of my professional life in US academia (Michigan, Virginia Tech, Harvard, Maryland, and now Georgia). I never stopped wondering how cities change and why American cities look and function so differently than European cities. So, I wrote a few books about cities, includingIron Curtains; Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space, which is about changes in East European Cities after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Cities take a long time to make. Can you make or remake them quickly, like you make instant coffee or assemble fast food? Turns out you can… but you better be a czar or have a similar claim to authority and it may take some time for the product to mature into something worth visiting and living in. David Brook’s A History of Future Cities is one of the most informative and intriguing books on this topic. Beautifully written, the book examines four landmark cases of cities with strong utopian streaks, where powerful political regimes tried to compress time in space and celebrate their glory. The four cases are St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Bombay, and Dubai. Read and dream of visiting. The book will leave you wishing to read about other cities of the same type, among them Washington DC, Brasilia, and Astana.
Hailed as an "original and fascinating book" (Times Literary Supplement), A History of Future Cities is Daniel Brook's captivating investigation of four "instant cities"-St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai-that sought to catapult themselves into the future by emulating the West.
As the author of Hicky's Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper I have great interest in journalism and history in the Indian subcontinent. There are relatively few books that explore these topics in a narrative nonfiction way. It is my hope that this shortlist will help readers find a few good books to start with.
Faleiro’s book is an impressive piece of investigative journalism. She followed the life of one woman, a teenage girl who worked as an exotic dancer in Mumbai. Faleiro paints a sobering image of Mumbai’s sex industry, especially dealing with government corruption and mafia-like figures. Her writing will keep you engrossed from start to finish.
Already published in India to great acclaim and named a Time Out Subcontinental Book of the Year and an Observer Book of the Year, Beautiful Thing is a stunning piece of reportage that offers a rare firsthand glimpse into Bombay’s notorious sex industry.
Sonia Faleiro was a reporter in search of a story when she met nineteen-year-old Leela, a charismatic exotic dancer with a story to tell. Leela introduced Sonia to the underworld of Bombay’s dance bars: a world of glamorous women; of fierce love, sex, and violence; of gangsters, police, prostitutes, and pimps. When an ambitious politician cashed in…
I am a lover of champagne and popular culture and am fascinated with how humor can be used to confront taboo topics and subvert familiar orthodoxies. As a cultural critic, I study how visual artists challenge notions of childhood innocence by adding images of drinking and drunkenness to their adaptations of children’s texts and childish objects. Through these re-imaginings, we see how children’s culture is drinking culture. The most important lessons about alcohol and childhood in the drinking curriculum walk a fine line between humor and dread. My other books include Graphic Girlhoods: Visualizing Education and Violence and Witnessing Girlhood: Toward an Intersectional Tradition of Life Writing (with Leigh Gilmore).
This bookcomes in the form of a small baby board book. On the back of this parody of a board book, the author asks “Are you a parent? Are you thirsty? Too many of us allow our infant sons and daughters to lay about idly napping, drinking milk, and sometimes ‘turning over.’ Why not have them mix you a cocktail? Thanks, Baby!”
Each page includes a mixology template for different members of the family. I particularly like the first recipe- a martini for mama. Additionally, like educational shape recognition texts that purportedly teach babies to organize visual information, Brown inserts easily recognizable liquor brands, Bombay Sapphire distilled London dry gin and Martini dry vermouth.
That the martini is the mother’s drink tickles the viewer to question whether gin is mother’s helper or mother’s ruin. Brown’s tongue-in-cheek board book foregrounds alcohol as pleasure and a baby that brings ease rather…
Many people are parents, and many parents are thirsty. Yet too many parents allow their infant sons and daughters to lie about idly: napping, drinking milk, and whatnot. Why not put them to work? Observe how tots enjoy the shapes and colors, all the while learning how to mix a variety of basic cocktails. Thanks, Baby!
I lived in Bombay until I was 21. During my teenage years I had a love-hate relationship with the city, mostly noticing its poverty, the pollution, and the crowds. But as a writer, I have come to love the city for its resilience, its sweet toughness, its heartbreaking beauty. I love reading books by other writers that are set in this endlessly fascinating metropolis of 22 million, each with their own story to tell, stories that float in the air in front of us, ready to be plucked and set on paper.
Rohinton Mistry’s masterwork Family Matters is as precise and delicate and realistic as Rushdie’s work is fantastical and flamboyant, a whisper instead of a shout. This book has a special resonance for me because the main characters are Parsi, a small, unique community in India, followers of the Zoroastrian faith that I was raised in. Mistry’s canvas is deceptively small and domestic—the squabbles of a family over caregiving and physical space—but this belies the emotional power of this moving novel. This is a 19th-century novel transposed to 21st-century India.
Rohinton Mistry’s enthralling novel is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, Nariman Vakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. His step-children, Coomy and Jal, have a spacious apartment (in the inaptly named Chateau Felicity), but are too squeamish and resentful to tend to his physical needs.
Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded home. Their decision will test…
I write about inequality in international development, American communities, environmental movements, and workplaces. I’ve been doing this reporting for over a decade. I’ve also worked in global health, an experience that has given me a first-hand glimpse into the depths and texture of inequality we have manufactured in our current world, including within the organizations and movements that purportedly challenge such global inequality. As a reader, I’m equally passionate about immersive nonfiction and fiction. I’ll dive into anything that’s driven by a good story.
I first read this book over a decade ago, and it has remained one of my favorites ever since. It is moving and exquisitely written, offering a close view of a community living on the edge of one of India’s biggest cities and exploring what it means to live on the cusp of wealth but mired in poverty.
Mostly, it is deeply human and a real page-turner. I expect this will remain my Holy Grail of writing and storytelling for a long time.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE
“Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People
“A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.”—Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • USA Today •…
I started writing my debut novel Kismet during the 2020 covid lockdown. I was quarantining in my small NYC apartment and, like many, wishing I could be anywhere else. Enter: the power of books. I’ve always loved reading for how it transports you around the world. My novel takes place in the eponymous sun-soaked beach town of Kismet, Fire Island, and writing it offered an escape. It reminded me of how reading books like below felt like embarking on my very own magical getaway, from Positano or London, to Alaska or Palm Springs, all from the comfort of home. I hope you find similar adventure in these novels’ pages.
This is one of those books that I started and couldn’t stop until I finished reading.
It’s a charming, romantic, jet-setting story about two strangers who win a radio contest for a trip around the world. The only problem? The two couldn’t be more different.
With all the favorite elements of a second chance (and forced proximity) romance story, set against the international and every-changing backdrops (from Sydney to Mexico City to Mumbai and more!), readers fall head-over-heels for Dylan and Jack’s relationship.
Heartfelt and deeply moving, Wanderlust made me yearn for a chance to travel the world (and maybe start entering more radio contests!).
People We Meet on Vacation meets The Unhoneymooners in this sparkling debut romantic comedy about two near strangers—and complete opposites—who win a radio contest for a trip around the world.
Love's about to take flight.
Feeling stuck at work and tired of London’s dreary weather, magazine writer Dylan Coughlan impulsively rings a radio station one day only to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world. The catch? Her travel partner must be a contact randomly selected on her phone. And of course this stressful game of contact roulette lands on a number listed only as Jack the Posho, an uptight,…
I'm a writer for kids and YA based in Pune, India and it’s been my passion to read books for this age group, from the time I was that age. Unfortunately, when I borrowed books from my library as a boy, so many kids and YA books were either not at all “story like” (moralistic or preachy) or we had to read books from abroad. Fortunately, Indian kids and YA literature has blossomed and provided us many excellent writers, some of whom are now household names. I interviewed some of them for my podcast on books Literary Gupshup. It's my desire to make readers outside India more aware of the wonderful kids’ books in India.
Who among us as, as kids and not so kids, has not dreamt of running away from home? We all have, let’s be frank.
But in Zai Whitaker’sAndamans Boy, Arif actually does it. Arif is sick and tired of the oppressive and shabby treatment by his aunt and uncle. He is also tired of life in a major city like Mumbai.
One night, he decides to run away, far far away to the deep south city of Chennai, from where he catches a boat to Andaman Islands. These islands are full of a large tribal population, and he quickly discovers nature of tribal society.
Full of frolic and fun, it also asks the fundamental question: what is development and how do we define the word “civilized”?
