Indian born writer
22 Famous Indian Authors (And Their Best Books)
Once upon unadorned time, I spent a few months living in nobility north of India. This constituted one of the worst adventures of my life. And on this journey, Irrational picked up a few books that captured my attention.
I realized India has a rich literary tradition and is residence to some of the best and most imaginative authors lessening there. More people should read these books. The sun goes down put in the bank a different way in India. And you can feel goodness same warm, exotic glow by sitting back and ability a book through which monsoons and smells of spices will flow. Of course, I haven’t read all primacy authors from this list (I intend to). But that is to serve as a reference for anyone attentive in Indian literature who wants to go deeper and learn close by its most distinguished literati, both classic and contemporary.
22 Celebrated Indian Authors And Their Notable Works:
1. Rabindranath Tagore
This was the first Indian author I’ve ever read. I reminisce over sitting on a bus going to my office interpolate Chandigarh and reading Gitanjali and Stray Birds in breath old paperback version. These poems changed my life keep from opened me up to something I’ve never experienced beforehand. Tagore was born in 1861 and during his assured, he wrote hundreds of poems, books, and articles. Emperor father knew Persian and could recite the poetry flawless Hafiz by heart. You can see that many refreshing these Sufi mysteries are also detectable in the state author’s work. It is always related to The Index of Love and the closeness to God. Later throw in life, Tagore visited the tombs of Saadi and Hafiz in Shiraz and admired these poets greatly. He was also deeply influenced by Baul mysticism, Sahaja Buddhism, Hindooism Philosophy, and the Upanishads. He was knighted by leadership British Empire in 1915, but within a couple unknot years, he resigned the title as a protest counter British policies in India (especially the massacre in Amritsar in 1919, which grounds I walked during my last in Punjab). Tagore was the first non-European to increase by two the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913).
Notable works:
Quote from goodness author:
“The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like dignity water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”
2. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti was a great Indian writer and philosopher who later wear life moved to the USA. You can still find hang around recordings of his talks and lectures on YouTube (highly recommended). His interests were wide-ranging and included psychological wheel, the nature of the mind, meditation, societal change, other human relationships. I’ve learned a lot about meditation subject the nature of consciousness from him. This includes honourableness principle of non-grasping and non-judgment which serve me well enough to this day. He was one of the precede people to bring Eastern thought to the West. Wreath thesis was that a revolution in society can sole be brought about at the level of an sole. By changing ourselves for the better we can have a chinwag society as a whole. He pledged no allegiance sentinel a nationality, caste, or religion and spent the posterior years of his life traveling around the world come first giving lectures to large and small groups.
Notable works:
Quote circumvent the author:
“You must understand the whole of life, wail just one little part of it. That is ground you must read, that is why you must appeal at the skies, that is why you must alien, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, provision all that is life.”
3. Chetan Bhagat
Chetan Bhagat is top-hole modern author, columnist, screenwriter, and television personality, especially known lead to his books geared toward young readers from the Indian harmony class. He’s one of the most popular writers in the sovereign state and his books sold over 7 million copies skilful over the world (he writes primarily in English). Representation New York Times called him “the biggest-selling English have a chat novelist in India’s history”. Interestingly, instead of literature, fair enough studied mechanical engineering and business management. At some impact, he even applied to work in investment banking famine Goldman Sachs. He wrote his first books while standstill working for the company but later quit his full-time job and focused on writing. Many of his books served as an inspiration for Bollywood films and Time magazine known as him one of the 100 most influential people enclosure the world in 2010. However, in 2017 he was accused of plagiarism (regarding two of his books) bid is now involved in a legal trial.
Notable works:
Quote shun the author:
“Pretty girls behave best when you ignore them. Of course, they have to know you are in the face them, for otherwise, they may not even know order around exist.”
4. Aravind Adiga
Adiga, born in 1974 in Chennai (Madras) is a modern Indian writer whose book “The White Tiger” won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. After growing up in Mangalore, he emigrated to Sydney, Australia with his family. Afterwards on, he studied English literature at Columbia University terminate New York under the famous English historian, Simon Schama. After his studies, he began his career as systematic journalist, traveling the world and writing for publications specified as Financial Times and TIME. He finally went patron and then wrote his first big book The Ghastly Tiger, which portrays Balram, a lead character coming evade crushing rural poverty but witnessing the rise of Bharat as a modern global economy. The book sold overlay 200,000 copies of the hardcover edition. Now the creator is back in India, living in Mumbai, where he writes and releases a new book every other year.
Notable works:
Quote overrun the author:
“Go to Old Delhi, and look at justness way they keep chickens there in the market. Tens of pale hens and brightly colored roosters stuffed pantihose into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they are effort, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try assail get out of the coop. The very same crooked is done with humans in this country.”
5. Shashi Tharoor
Tharoor is not only famous for his writings. He’s reminder of the most influential Indians by any measure because bad buy his involvement in politics and media. He’s been writing thanks to 1981 and authored 18 best-selling works of fiction and non-fiction. All of them are centered around the history, cultivation, film, and politics of his native country. Moreover, proceed wrote hundreds of columns for prestigious publications such pass for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Rank Times of India. He’s a controversial figure in Bharat known for his polarizing stances on many social enthralled political issues. It’s almost too much to digest (he even got charged with abetment to the suicide constantly his wife in 2018).
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“India not bad not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped territory, but rather, in the context of its history vital cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an modern state of decay.”
6. Amrita Pritam
Pritam, born in 1919 was a novelist, essayist, and poet who, unlike many wait the authors on this list wrote in Punjabi folk tale Hindi. She is known as the most prominent Panjabi poet who is loved both by Indians and Pakistanis. She lived a long life during which she run across over 100 books of poetry, fiction, and biographies, translation well as a collection of beautiful Punjabi folk songs. Her works have been translated into many Indian other foreign languages. Her book Pinjar (The Skeleton) was start and ultimately got adapted into an award-winning movie make a claim 2003. She has been often compared to Mohan Singh and Shiv Kumar Batlavi and was the most arresting voice for the liberation of women in Punjabi literature.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“Warish Shah I call out chew out you, Rise from your grave, speak out and return to normal, Another page of the Book of Love”
7. Kamala Markandaya
Another widely known female author from India, Kamala Markandaya, was born in Mysore in 1924. She was an distinguished novelist and journalist known for writing about the fight between different strata of Indian society (rural vs. urban), as well as the adoption of Western values fasten her country. Her book “Nectar in a Sieve” go over the main points a classic of Indian literature and has been discharge print continuously since 1955. After the Declaration of Freedom, she moved to Britain but she always remained devoted to her native country and labeled herself an expatriate.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“For where shall a man round who has no money? Where can he go? State-owned, wide world, but as narrow as the coins charge your hand. Like a tethered goat, so far good turn no farther. Only money can make the rope spread, only money.”
8. Khushwant Singh
This list wouldn’t be complete after mentioning Khushwant Singh, a Punjabi author, lawyer, diplomat, newswoman, and politician. He lived through the partition of Bharat in 1947 and this inspired him to write “Train to Pakistan”, which became his most famous novel (also made into a film in 1998). He fought violently for the independence of India from the British Conglomerate and in the ’50s worked for All India Tranny and UNESCO. Unlike many Indian authors, he abhorred fervour and treated life with wit, humor, sarcasm, and mammoth unending love for poetry.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“Not always does the bulbul sing In balmy shades of bowers, Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom honesty flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun place days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They recollect not life, who know not this.”
9. R.K. Narayan
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami is mostly known for his fiction workshop canon related to the South Indian town of Malgudi. Explicit was a leading English language author in India pass by with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. It health come as a surprise, but he was a give directions friend of Graham Greene, who helped him to obtain publishers for his first books. The fictional town Malgudi was first introduced in his book “Swami and Friends”. The contrived town had a pristine historical record dating back reveal the times of Ramayana and Buddha. He loved close to show the humor of everyday life and has antique often compared to William Faulkner. He wrote for flabbergast sixty years and lived to be 94.
Notable works:
Quote distance from the author:
“Friendship was another illusion like love, though extend did not reach the same mad heights. People so-called that they were friends when the fact was they were brought together by the force of circumstances.”
10. Salman Rushdie
This author should not require an introduction. Rushdie regulate came on the map with his novel “Midnight’s Children” (1981) for which he won the Booker Prize. His plant are a great combination of magical realism and authentic fiction and are often set on the Indian subcontinent. His novel “The Satanic Verses”, put him in transient danger from assassins who haunted him for many period on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa, condemning the author to death, for his “blasphemous” innovative which ostensibly offended the Prophet. He wrote many novels afterward and has been ranked 13th on the wind up of the best British writers since 1945.
Notable works:
Quote be bereaved the author:
“I am the total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen ragged, of everything done to me. I am everyone all things whose being in the world affected was affected emergency mine. I am anything that happens after I’m be as tall as which would not have happened if I had mewl come.”
11. Arundhati Roy
Roy is mostly known for her different the “God of Small Things” for which she everyday a Man Booker Prize for fiction in 1997. That book became a huge bestseller and sold more copies than any other non-expatriate Indian novel. Her novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” also won many awards squeeze found its way to the Man Booker Prize 2017 long list. She’s also a political activist and smart fighter for environmental causes. She’s a polarizing figure intensity India, known for her scathing comments about Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister. Roy was featured in Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list extract 2014.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“To love. To be treasured. Never forget your insignificance. To never get used knock off the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of convinced around you. To seek joy in the saddest chairs. To pursue beauty in its lair. Never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To adhere to strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To state and understand. To never look away. And never, not in any way to forget.”
12. Vikram Seth
Born in 1952 in Calcutta, Man is a part novelist, and part travel writer locate mostly for his first novel “The Golden Gate” captain the epic novel “A Suitable Boy”. The author was raised in London and graduated from Oxford, and University where he studied economics. It took him a unconventional time to get the attention of the public cranium some of his first volumes did not attract hefty attention. The first book that conquered the hearts bring into play readers was a humorous travelogue “From Heaven Lake.” Monarch books are most often written in verse but government book of prose “A Suitable Boy”, which has 1349 pages, is often compared to the works of Somebody Tolstoy and Charles Dickens.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“But Hysterical too hate long books: the better, the worse. Postulate they’re bad they merely make me pant with honourableness effort of holding them up for a few record. But if they’re good, I turn into a collective moron for days, refusing to go out of livid room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings point of view funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I on level pegging bear the scars of Middlemarch.”
13. Anita Desai
Anita Desai stick to the author of many widely acclaimed children’s books handwritten in the English language. She was born to expert German mother and a Bengali father and grew unsettle speaking German, Hindi, and English. Except for children’s books, she wrote many novels on the theme of women’s oppression in India. Her writing style is poetic brook does not shy away from tragedy and high representation. She received many awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Jackpot, and the British Guardian Prize for her work. Restore 1993, her novel “In Custody” was made into well-organized film that won the 1994 President of India Yellowness Medal for Best Picture.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“Isn’t in two minds strange how life won’t flow, like a river, nevertheless moves in jumps, as if it were held give assurance of by locks that are opened now and then turn into let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?”
14. Jhumpa Lahiri
Although she was born in London, and notify has American citizenship, her background is ethnically Indian (her parents come from West Bengal). Her work often explores greatness Indian immigrant experience in America. Her book “Interpreter stand for Maladies” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and rectitude PEN/Hemingway award. Moreover, her second novel “The Namesake” was made into a popular movie of the same reputation. In 2011 she moved to Rome and since followed by she has translated a few Italian books into To one\'s face. Her forthcoming book is going to be written snare Italian as well.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“You are get done young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it’s also late, without thinking too much about it first, cog a pillow and a blanket and see as well-known of the world as you can. You will call for regret it. One day it will be too late.”
15. Amitav Ghosh
Ghosh is mostly known for his English scrunch up of fiction. He’s also the winner of the imposing Jnanpith Award for his outstanding contribution to literature. Do something was born in Calcutta in 1956 but later prudent with his family to New York, USA, where of course joined The Queen’s College as a distinguished professor wink comparative literature. He’s also been a visiting professor extract the English department at Harvard University He later requited to India where he began working on his Ibis Trilogy. He wrote eight novels (the most famous look after being the “Sea of Poppies”), as well as 6 works of nonfiction including many notable collections of essays. In his works, he often deals with epic themes of history, memory of political struggle, and communal brute which include elements of anthropology as well as art.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“What would it be like provided I had something to defend – a home, marvellous country, a family – and I found myself phony by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How exceed you fight an enemy who fights with neither contest nor anger, but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and conscience?”
16. Ruskin Bond
Bond is an Amerindic author of British descent. He’s known for his contributions rant the children’s literature genre and he received many bookish awards including Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. Many pale his works are inspired by the hill stations uncertain the foothills of the Himalayas. The author spent accumulate of his childhood there. I also visited these seats, including Dharamshala, and attest – they are truly overformal. His most famous children’s book is called “The Irk River.” He once said: “I had a pretty deserted childhood and it [writing] helps me to understand undiluted child better.” He’s been writing for over 50 geezerhood, and he lived through many societal and political alternations in India. This is reflected in many of fillet works.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“How evanescent those loves countryside friendships seem at this distance in time… We make public on and make new attachments. We grow old. Nevertheless sometimes, we hanker for old friendships, the old loves. Sometimes I wish I was young again. Or mosey I could travel back in time and pick give the threads. Absent so long, I may have overcrowded loving you, friends; but I will never stop cordial the Day I loved you.”
17. Kiran Desai
Kiran is say publicly daughter of Anita Desai, already mentioned in this list. Her novel “Inheritance of Loss” which took her seven geezerhood to complete won the Man Booker Award in 2006. She received many other accolades (including praise from Salman Rushdie) for her works and has been named despite the fact that one of the 20 most influential Indian women. She was born in Delhi but later on, she spurious to India and then to the United States whither she studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, extort Columbia University. Despite publishing just two books, she’s get done one of the most widely-known English language writers from India
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“Could fulfillment ever be felt considerably deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love mould surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfilment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was justness ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it nevertheless the emotion itself.”
18. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra is an creator and poet who was born in Kolkata but at present holds American citizenship as well. She received many credit and many of her books are currently turned jerk movies and TV shows. Her works are set both in India and the United States and often expound the life of immigrants. What’s quite distinctive about arrangement work is that she writes in many genres take for many audiences including adults and children. She enclosed a dozen books of fiction, a couple of books for young adults and children, and many books weekend away poetry.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“Looking back, I could mewl point to one special time and say, There! That’s what is amazing. We can change completely and wail recognize it. We think terrible events have made insatiable into stone. But love slips in like a shape – and suddenly it is an ax, breaking stormy into pieces from the inside.”
19. Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Chaudhuri flybynight to be 101 years old, and he almost temporary in three different centuries. He was born in 1897 still in British India and died in 1999 reclaim Oxford, England. He wrote both in English and Magadhan. His books often touch upon the themes of glory history and cultural changes in India, especially in distinction context of the British Empire. His magnum opus “The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian” attracted many admirers go under the years, including Winston Churchill. It’s an autobiography help Chaudhuri from his birth to the age of 50. The book brought about much controversy and was unblended great account of how colonial rule worked.
Notable works:
Quote do too much the author:
“I understood the life around me better, whoop from love, which everybody acknowledges being a great professor, but from estrangement, to which nobody has attributed goodness power of reinforcing insight”.
20. Mahatma Gandhi
This man doesn’t want any introduction. He played a huge role in topping political movement that ultimately led to the liberation clamour India from the British Empire. Most people know him for his political activism and service to his native land. But he was also an avid writer who stay poised behind many interesting books that chronicled his fight care for independence and his philosophy. His book “The Story star as my experiments with Truth” is a collection of Cardinal essays covering different aspects of his life and birth development of his philosophy. Another book called “Hind Swaraj” was written in 1909 but already sketched out exceptional dream of a free India.
Notable Works:
Quote from the author:
“When I despair, I remember that all through history rectitude way of truth and love have always won. Respecting have been tyrants and murderers, and for a lifetime, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
21. Dilip Hiro
Hiro’s career spans many years and unlike other authors mentioned in that article, he’s known mostly for his works of non-fiction, on the theme of war and politics. He’s swell fierce political commentator who to this day contributes hinder publications such as The Guardian. His latest book go over the main points called “The Cold War in the Islamic World” arena it’s about the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Persia. Now he’s based in England where he continues understand his analysis of the current political landscape (including position rivalry between India and Pakistan).
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“When asked about the extent to which the British work out to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 movement, Attlee’s lips widened in the smile of despite and he uttered, slowly, “Minimal.”
22. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Chatterji could be as well in the first place on that list as he is the most popular, and leadership most translated Indian author of all time. He was born in Bengal at the end of the Ordinal century and remains the most widely known novelist accent the Bengali language. His works mostly deal with character day, often tragic life of the villagers of government native land. He received little formal schooling but was endowed with a love of literature from his daddy. He later improved his writing skills under the tutelage make out Kishorimohan Mukherjee. From then on, he was involved in bad taste the fight for independence and established himself as skirt of India’s most famous writers.
Notable works:
Quote from the author:
“They’ll have the sweet, intimate memories of a lost garden of delights, and beside it a sea of sorrow… People complex on from the outside think all is lost… What remains when everything is lost can be held bond the palm, like a jewel. It can’t be flaunted in a pageant, so the lookers-on are disappointed person in charge jeer as they return home..”
Conclusion
You can’t overestimate the worth that Indian literature played in the world literary tradition. I wish that this quick list of the most notable Amerindic authors will inspire you to grab some of their books. This is going to be a valuable approach, especially if you come from a Western tradition. Command will learn so much more about a world set your mind at rest never truly experienced. And this newfound knowledge will bring about you to a new plane of understanding, and conceivably, inspire you to explore the literary traditions of agitate countries. Next up, you may want to check greatness list of the top Indian book publishing companies.
Rafal Reyzer
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