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Books for Adults & Senior Students - Books about India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka |
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July 2007 The following titles should be of interest to teachers and librarians interested in the 'world literature' component of the senior I.B. program, and to all teachers and librarians wishing to expand their awareness and appreciation of new world literature. One particular possible ‘application’ of the Asian literatures lies in the field of ‘theory of knowledge’ since Indian writing in many ways challenges Western epistemologies and Western perceptions of the world. Not all titles are equally suitable for school use, but I have not included anything that could not be used and I have deliberately omitted certain other authors and titles which I regard as probably unsuitable. All these titles are originally in English unless specifically indicated in brackets after the title. Titles newly included in this list are marked with • Please Note All prices are in Australian dollars and include the 10% GST tax. The GST does not apply to exports from Australia and therefore prices for overseas schools are 10% less than the listed price. Recommended by Dr Ron Shapiro, Formerly Senior Lecturer in New Literatures, University of Western Australi Collections Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West (eds). The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947-97, pb $32.95 Possibly the best anthology on Indian-English fiction produced so far. Incredibly, every piece included in this 560 page anthology is of considerable interest, giving an excellent idea of the wide range of styles and interests among Indian writers using the English language. The book has been reviewed very favourably by academic reviewers, the only criticism being its failure to include more writers in translation from other Indian languages. But the book demonstrates that there is more than enough important writing in English for one anthology, and what is required is a separate anthology for writers in the indigenous languages. Personally I am more impressed by Salman Rushdie's taste with regard to other writers than his own writing. Novels Monica Ali, Brick Lane pb $24.95 A debut novel which has received rave reviews from international press and was short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. The protagonists are a Bangla couple in a traditional marriage who subsequently move to the UK and live in an East End slum area. In the manner of the classic 19th century novel, Brick Lane charts the course of the woman's inner life and the gradual dissolution of the relationship under different social pressures. A book of exceptional intensity and literary flair unusual in a first novel, and a book for the serious reader of fiction. Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable pb $24.95. Anand is one of India's most prolific and established authors. Untouchable, is Anand's social protest against caste injustice. Anand, a socialist, humanist and realist, always wrote to be understood (even by middle school level students). Anita Rau Badami. The Hero’s Walk $21.95 An Indian novel about an Indian family, the book has been favourable compared with Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy pb $29.95. In particular it is a study of a father’s dismissive attitude towards his daughter who is married and lives in the US—until, that is, she is killed in a road accident and he has to bring his American grand daughter back to India into his home. The novel could be regarded as a plea for common humanitarian principles over ingrained social mores and traditional Indian strictures which tend to blinker and hinder the interplay of common human emotions. Rajeev Balasubramanyam, In Beautiful Disguises, pb. $21.95 All the review comments of this novel talk about its subtle mixture of the beautiful, the bawdy and the serious, and this is one way to describe an Indian novel which is in some ways different from anything that has come before. The plot is simple: a girl attempts to escape the violence of her family by escaping into day dreams and later by leaving home. But the power of this novel is in the telling, in the protagonist’s comic identification with film stars which dictate how she should behave in an adult world and, more generally, its interest lies in the exploration of an escapist psychology. Shauna Singh Baldwin, What the Body Remembers, pb $27.95 An Indian novel in the tradition of Train to Pakistan and Cracking India about events in India around the time of Partition. What the Body Remembers is a slow-moving detailed study of a Sikh family, in particular of Roop the younger daughter of a Punjabi family that is fast running out of money and consequently Roop is married off as a second wife to another Sikh family for the purpose of producing a male heir. A highly controlled kind of storytelling where the pace steadily increases towards a gripping climax as all and sundry are caught up in the mayhem of Partition. Anita Desai, In Custody, pb $27.95 Desai is an Indian author of international renown. Her metier and focus is usually on the single individual in Indian society who is disempowered and has to struggle in the everyday world just to survive. In this novel the focus is on a schoolteacher, a timid sensitive man who can hardly cope with the roughness of ordinary life. Ironically, it turns out that this very ordinary man exudes cultivated sensibility while a famous Indian poet whom he worships is, in ordinary life, a crass and totally unprepossessing character. Desai deflates the popular myth of the writer/artist as a specially refined person in his/her ordinary everyday dealings. Diamond Dust, pb $27.95 Anita Desai has been one of India's best known women writers for over a half century. This new books of short stories surprises in that it contains some of her best writing, perhaps unexpected in an author in the later part of her highly successful career. The bulk of Desai's stories are about women, particularly the woman who feels herself to exist on the fringe of her society, in some ways perhaps a kind of Indian Anita Brookner. Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard pb $22.95 A recent prize-winning novel by the daughter-author of Anita Desai. This novel reminds me a good deal of R.K Narayan's work, perhaps especially The Guide, where an ordinary and not very prepossessing man somehow manages to turn himself into a religious holy man who is worshiped by a whole town and district. Like Narayan's work, this is a funny novel which is also serious in its satirical comment on unsophisticated religious practices in parts of India and the gullibility of ordinary people. Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni, Arranged Marriage, pb. $27.95 A collection of short stories about Indian-born women living in the US, ideas no doubt gleaned in large part from the author’s own experiences. Although a previous novel The Mistress of Spices pb $22.95 was somewhat problematical, these are straightforward well-written stories, often dealing in a comic-serious way with the many adjustments to thinking and behaviour required in the transition between two very different societies with their very different social codes. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust, pb $24.95 Jhabvala is known for her Merchant Ivory film scripts ("Room with a View", etc) but is also an established novelist in her own right. Heat and Dust is probably the best known of her fiction and has long been used as a high school text in Australia. Esmond in India pb $22.95 Probably Ruth Jhabvala's best Indian novel containing an intereseting psychological account of a charming but exploitative Englishman and his rather shady means of making a living in India, the story set back in the time of the Raj; more specifically the way he insinuates himself into the life of a pretty but naive young Indian woman who is quite mistaken in what she sees in Esmond. Reminiscent of E M Forster's celebrated Indian theme, this story is about the truth and the illusion in the conflict of East versus West. Yan Martel, Life of Pi, $24.95 Winner of a number of literary prizes, this is a novel with a difference. It really has little to do with Asia other than the story’s protagonist kin nominally Indian and explores, in passing, some of the issues in Hindu life. But the main part of the story is not about India at all but rather is a kind of modern Robinson Crusoe story of a boy who is left adrift on a lifeboat, amazingly in the company of a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utang, and a Bengal tiger, all of which animals the boys’ zoo-keeper father was having shipped to a new destination, that is before the ship sank. If this sounds surreal, there is nevertheless enough realism in the telling to make the story credible, an unusual mixture of magic realism and naturalism. Pankaj Mishra, The Romantics, pb. $29.95 A new first and highly acclaimed novel, The Romantics is an engaging story of human relationships. Given the fairly ordinary title, and given the story of the friendships between some young people, Indians and non-Indians, and given the very direct and simple naturalism of the novel’s style, I had expected yet another book that covered ground already well dealt with - say by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and others. However, the surprise is that this turns out to be a psychologically gripping and first class probe into the question of what Westerners are really looking for in places like India and how some Indians find it hard to know what Westerners are really doing and thinking, a novel which goes deeper than any previous attempts of its kind; in fact, the novel turns out to be in some respects a consideration of what ails the Western mind after the manner of Flaubert and other great classical writers. Very highly recommended. U.R. Anantha Murthy, Samskara: The Rite for a Dead Man, (in trans) pb $19.95 A very important Indian novel, recently reissued, which goes to the heart of traditional Hinduism and the lives of high caste Brahmins in southern India. There is no better introduction to Indian notions of caste and to a religious Hindu mentality, though the novel was controversial when it was published in the 1960s, some south Indian Brahmins claiming that Murthy's representation is insufficiently reverential. The novel's title, Samskara, refers to a Brahmin's quest for spiritual perfection. This is an essential novel for all students of Indian or Asian thought. R.K. Narayan, The Guide, pb $24.95 The Financial Expert pb $22.95 The Vendor of Sweets pb $29.95 Bachelor of Arts pb $22.95 The English Teacher pb $23.95 Mr Sampath pb $27.95 Waiting for the Mahatma pb $22.95 Swami and Friends pb $23.95 Malgudi Days (collection of short stories) pb $24.95 Narayan is the best known of the Indian novelists and anyone interested in non-Western literature should be familiar with his work. His writing is characteristically simple, satirical, humorous with sometimes just a touch of allegory thrown in. These are novels which are used regularly on Matric and university courses and could be enjoyed from middle school level upwards. Bali Rai, (Un)arranged Marriage, pb. $20.95 Set in the north of England, this is a story about an adolescent Sikh boy's attempts to break away from his very traditional Punjabi family. Told from the boy's point of view, it is a story full of humour and desperation, a kind of Indian Catcher in the Rye, but also almost a kind of TV soapie, and a narrative which wonderfully captures the hybrid mixture of Indian and northern English colloquialisms. Great fun to read and I imagine most secondary students would love this book. Also Rani and Sukh pb $17.95 Again this is a highly readable novel about Indian race relations in Britain. In all of his writing the author is able to capture a vivid sense of the adolescent mind as well as the way old family traditions of honour still effect expat Indian families in Britain. Dealing specifically with the subject of adolescent love in a very recognisable modern day world, this book cannot help but appeal to most secondary school students, raising as it does a gamut of difficult modern day questions. Raja Rao, Kanthapura pb $22.95 Rao constructs a brilliant different world in this story of Indian village life during the Mahatma Gandhi campaign. Rao is an extraordinary stylist and this is one of the best novels ever to come out of India. Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy pb $24.95 Cinnamon Gardens pb $22.95 Funny Boy is a novel from Sri Lanka which has deservedly received widespread rave reviews. An exceptional story set against the background of recent violent Tamil-Sinhalese confrontations narrated from the point of view of a boy trying to come to terms with his homosexuality and the world in general. Powerful storyline, striking characterisation, this is a novel which offers an important insight into the tensions which exist in contemporary Sri Lankan social and family life, a story presented with a wonderful sense of immediacy, lyricism and humour. Cinnamon Gardens is a new novel which even surpasses Funny Boy in breadth and depth, establishing the author as a major literary talent, dealing as it does with several members of a Tamil family but without the same stress on the homosexual theme, although this is the same (authorial?) struggle which afflicts one of the family members. The central character, however, is a young woman with a progressive outlook who aspires to be a teacher and to follow her own career rather than submitting to the family demands of a traditional marriage, etc. In the process this is a novel which (perhaps in some ways reminiscent of A Suitable Boy) plumbs the psychology of the modern and traditional mind in Sri Lankan society. Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India, pb. $34.95 Probably the best novel written about Indian Partition. The story is told from a child's point of view which has the effect of making the scenes of carnage and destruction all the more nightmarish. Bapsi Sidwa is an exceptionally polished writer who knows how to combine humour with grotesquerie, creating great tension through this unusual and improbable combination. Despite the high price of this imported paperback, this is writing of quality and well worth the outlay. Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, $27.95 The first Indian novel to tackle the subject of Indian Partition and a highly readable story which adds an additional element into the Hindu-Muslim confrontations - that of Sikh heroism. The subject has to do with human and social chaos. The story is told through the eyes of a district police superintendant who feels events going beyond his control and who can only try philosophically to distance himself from the tide of mounting threatening events. At the end of the story it takes a religious rather than rational act of courage on the part of a Sikh hero to save a trainload of people from otherwise certain disaster. A Sivanandan, When Memory Dies, pb $27.95 A recent very impressive large novel from Sri Lanka (written in English) covering three generations of a Tamil family from political pre-independence to the present. Modern Sri Lankan history is not so well known as modern Indian history and this novel fills an important gap. Moreover, this is an eminently accessible and readable novel which gets quite away from the recent metropolitan obsession with tricky narrative, closer for instance to the humanist concerns of, say, A Suitable Boy than to the narrative fireworks of Salman Rushdie.
Modern Indian Novels In Translation Series An exciting new ambitious and scholarly series of Indian novels from India in English translation has recently appeared, a series specially designed to provide a comprehensive view of contemporary Indian literatures across the many different regional and linguistic states of the Indian subcontinent. In its careful selection of contemporary stories from across India, the series strives to uphold a certain level of literary quality. At the same time this is the opposite pole in Indian writing to an ‘internationalist’ like Salman Rushdie, for this is writing which touches far more intimately on ordinary human lives and their everyday struggles. These stories are presented in a format that is particularly useful for teachers and students at secondary and tertiary levels. For instance, each novel comes with an informative introduction written by a regional expert which aims to contextualise the particular piece within a larger regional, cultural and linguistic framework. Further, each story contains an accessible footnoted glossary of Indian cultural and linguistic terms specially designed to assist the non-Indian reader.
G.V. Krishna Rao, Puppets, pb $17.50 A novel translated from Telagu and set in Andhra Pradesh, a southern Indian state. The story follows from an act of deceit when Pullaya denies he stood surety for his friend Chandrasekharam when the latter borrowed money from a money-lender for a business enterprise. One lie sets in train a series of repercussions throughout the village where people take sides according to individual wealth, caste and social standing. A story which explores the less positive side of village life and of human nature, but which provides us with a vivid picture of the inner dynamics of village life in this region. U.R. Anantha Murthy, Bharathipura, pb 17.50 Anantha Murthy, the author of Samskara, is a well-known and celebrated South Indian writer. In this new novel a young Western educated liberal landlord attempts to bring about a social revolution in the traditional small Indian village within his bailiwick by urging the low caste villagers to enter the local temple (the domain of the upper castes). But what are this man’s real motives? The novel questions the philosophical and human motives behind social reform. And from a neighbouring region: Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, $22.95 Autobiography is currently a popular genre, sometimes regarded as ‘life writing’ among some critics. This book is very much about ‘life’ and about ‘writing’ in that, as the title suggests, it is about the (Iranian) author’s own experience of teaching modern Western literary classics to Iranian students in Tehran. The time is the recent period following the deposition of the Shah and the rise of the Khomeini regime. The students are mainly young women who have recently been forced to adopt the strict Islamic dress code. Their discussions of novels like Lolita and The Great Gatsby ironically touch on issues of human freedom, individualism, liberalism, laughter, at a moment when most of these things are in the process of being outlawed from Iranian society. The author’s experiences will be of interest to anyone interested in the discussion of literature, especially when literature is viewed cross-culturally. And what makes the account even more readable is the author’s nimble facility with the English language, something one suspects imputable to her love of Nabokov. A highly unusual and gripping account. Kurban Said, Ali and Nino, pb. $23.95 A novel that stands apart from the literatures of either the Eastern or Western worlds in that it stands at the crossways between Eastern and Western worlds. This is a novel about Azerbaijan written by an unknown author and published in the 1930s, a novel that might never have survived to the present day but for its chance rediscovery and translation. But the novel itself is equally rare, almost of Tolstoyan proprtions in its subject matter that balances a love story with social and political events in this region around the time of the First World War, but all of this packed into only just over 200 pages of exciting reading, a rare feat indeed. The importance of the novel is that it enters, as never before, into the mind of the Muslim world in all of its variety and complexity but at the same time manages to compare and contrast this mindset with Western or European ways of thinking. I know of no other work of fiction (even if one includes Passage to India) that achieves this contrast and comparison so effectively.
If you would like to order any of the above books, send orders to Austral Ed by fax, post or email. All prices are in Australian dollars and include a GST of 10% which is not applicable for overseas schools or exports from Australia. For additional lists of recommended books and newsletters from Austral Ed, visit our website www.australed.iinet.net.au |
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