



: Fiction
Burnt Shadows
Kamila Shamsie
Bloomsbury
A sweeping epic crossing cultures and continents, set between Nagasaki and 9/11 in India, Pakistan, New York and Afghanistan.
Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese
Random House
Moving from Madras to Ethiopia to US, from the 1940s to now, a novel about the world of medicine and its connection to love and loss.
Family Planning
Karan Mahajan
Rupa
The book captures Arjun’s teenage angst and frustration, his budding love and alternate life as an aspiring rockstar.
Homeboy
H V Naqvi
Harper
Debut novel by young Pakistani writer exploring the changing world of young Pakistanis based in the West.
The Immortals
Amit Chaudhuri
Picador
Follows the paths of three musicians, examining the relationship between music and money.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin
Random House
Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan.
Life Is Perfect
Himani Dalmia
Rupa
A portrait of modern life in Delhi, it is peopled with a wide cast of characters and winding through colleges, café parties and dinners.
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay
Siddharth D Shanghvi
Penguin
Karan Seth, star photographer is in Bombay on a private mission: to immortalise the city in a unique photo-record of its hidden faces.
Map of the Invisible World
Tash Aw
Harper
Brilliant literary novel set in Indonesia.
My Kind of Girl
Buddhadeva Bose
Random House
Four middle-aged men sit together in a railway station. To pass their time, each tell a story of a woman they loved secretly in their youth…
Revenge of Ravana, Sons of Sita
Ashok Banker
Two new books in his Ramayana series.
Salim Must Die
Mukul Deva
Harper
A sequel to Lashkar, it begins with the death of Osama bin Laden.
Sethji
Shobhaa Dé
Penguin
Dé’s first novel in a decade, this is a book that the entire nation will be looking forward to.
Solo
Rana Dasgupta
Harper
Set in Bulgaria, it is a novel about lost roots and wasted ambitions — and the depths of lyricism by which human beings overcome them.
The Story of My Assassins
Tarun Tejpal
Harper
Follows the travails of five men charged with conspiring to kill a down and out journalist, forcing him to look beyond his life, into theirs.
The Wish Maker
Ali Sethi
Penguin
This is a novel of love, friendship, politics and family ties, set against the turbulent background of modern Pakistan.
Also look out for:
Ira Trivedi’s The Great Indian Love Story, Sankar’s The Middleman, the sequel to Almost Single by Advaita Kala.
There are many on the yet to be named category for novels. These include ones by Upamanyu Chatterjee, Anita Nair, Radhika Jha, Jaishree Mishra, Sharmila Kantha.
There are a number of debut novels lined up too. These include Amruta Kumar (Damage), Pinki Virani (Deaf Heaven), Sampurna Chatterji (Rupture), Partha Basu (The Case of 221 B), Manu Joseph (The Serious Men), Shailaja Bajpai (Arranged Lives), Rukmini Bhaya Nair (Mad Girl’s Love Song), Chandrahas Chowdhury (Aarzee the Dwarf), Ananya Banerjee (Kitty Party Sanyasins), Sangeeta Mall (untitled) and CY Gopinath (The Books of Answers) and a graphic novel by Vishwajyoti Ghosh.
Non fiction
Aryabhatta’s Children: Why Science Will Transform India in the 21st Century
APJ Abdul Kalam
Allen Lane
The former President outlines a pragmatic vision of technological development that will propel India to the forefront of the world in the coming decades.
Baulsphere
Mimlu Sen
Random House
A portrait of the baul musicians of Bengal, it takes you into the heart of rural Bengal.
A Better India, A Better World
NR Narayana Murthy
Allen Lane
One of the great visionary corporate leaders of our times, Murthy offers his insights on a variety of issues that face the nation.
Breakthrough Innovation
Porus Munshi
Harper
Pathbreaking stories about Indian companies who made a success of new business models.
The Butterfly Generation:
A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth
Palash Krishna Mehrotra
Rupa
About the socialist India of the 80s, and the capitalist India of the late 90s and now.
Cricket: Beyond the Blues
Aakash Chopra
Harper
An account of domestic cricket in the year past.
The Difficulty of Being Good
Gurcharan Das
Allen Lane
Casts light on our contemporary moral dilemmas, personal and social, political and economic, by interrogating the Mahabharata.
Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose your Weight
Rujuta Diwekar
Random House
The ultimate diet for daily life from Kareena Kapoor’s dietician.
The Ethical Worker
Subroto Bagchi
Penguin Portfolio
Focusses on how to build and sustain ethical work cultures and how ethics can be the crucial differentiator between the ordinary and the extraordinary manager.
The Family and the Nation
Acharya Mahapragya and APJ Abdul Kalam
Harper
Two iconic figures combine to write a book on a subject of crucial importance
India-1947: A Fractured Freedom
Jaswant Singh
Rupa
Why did the Partition happen? Who was responsible — Jinnah, the Congress or the British?
Intolerant India
Gautam Adhikari
Harper
The rising tide of intolerance and its implications for the country.
The Maruti Story
RC Bhargava and Seetha
Harper
The story of how the iconic small car came to be built and the ways in which it changed the concept of mobility in the country.
More Fiction than Fact
Manoj Mitta
Harper
About the commissions of inquiry, and the fiction of fact-finding.
National Interest
Shekhar Gupta
Allen Lane
A selection of the best writings from his columns written between 1997 and 2008.
The Rediscovery of India
Meghnad Desai
Allen Lane
When did India first begin to be ‘global’? Desai traces the economic and political choices made as India seeks to redefine its place in the world.
Sex in a Time of Socialism
Sanjay Suri
Harper
Those halcyon days of Indian cinema when the kiss was taboo…
Sufism: The Heart of Islam
Sadia Dehlvi
Harper
A polemical, informative book on Sufism in the Indian subcontinent with profiles of all the different Sufi saints.
Witness To An Era
Narayan Datt Tiwari
Rupa
This autobiography explores the man as well as the politician .
Also look out for:
The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Music of India, The Anthology of Bengali Literature and The Anthology of Hindi Literature. Also Sunil Janah’s Indian Railways, Bankruptcy to Billions and Photographing India, a collection of photographs from the turn of the century and Vinay Lal’s anthology on the Indian city.
Significant titles also include Absolute Khushwant, a collection of his writings, and India’s Soft Power, by Shashi Tharoor. Books on democracy include Atul Kohli’s Democracy and Development in India and Ashutosh Varshney’s Battles Half-Won also on the functioning of the Indian Democracy, Between Extremes A Portrait of the New India by Manjeet Kripalani and Santosh Desai’s Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India.
Rounding up the year will be Amartya Sen’s new book The Idea of Justice.
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