Indian Literature
This page covers Indian literature. McKee Library's collection includes numerous titles by Indian authors. We have included a selection of these titles in our reading list, linked below.
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Indian Literature: McKee Library Reading ListAn Indian literature reading list. This is not an exhaustive list, rather a list of titles available in McKee Library's collection.
Resources
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Indian Literature: Credo ReferenceOral literature in the vernacular languages of India is of great antiquity, but it was not until about the 16th cent. that an extensive written literature appeared. Chief factors in this development were the intellectual and literary predominance of Sanskrit until then (except in S India, where a vast literature in Tamil was produced from ancient times) and the emergence of Hindu pietistic movements that sought to reach the people in their spoken languages.
Streaming Media
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Epic Literature: RamayanaDelve into the first Indian epic: the Ramayana, which is a poem, a love story, a morality tale, and much more. Discover the story of Prince Rama, his faithful wife, Sita, and the gods that control their lives. It is also an important source for many of the historical details we have about the era.
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Anthology of Contemporary Indian WritingThis program spotlights a diverse group of Indian writers invited to participate in the Belles Etrangeres, a French literary festival. Featured authors include award-winning Bengali novelist and social activist Mahasweta Devi; Kannada novelist U. R. Ananthamurthy, former president of the Sahitya Akademi; Hindi stylist Krishna Baldev Vaid; Malayalam writer M. Mukundan; Marathi Dalit writer Narendra Jadhav; Hindi poet Udayan Vajpeyi; Gujarati memoirist and novelist Esther David; English-language novelists Shashi Tharoor, Anita Rau Badami, Upamanyu Chatterjee, and Shauna Singh Baldwin; and the author-illustrator duo Anushka Ravishankar and Pulak Biswas.
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The Great Indian EpicsGet inside Indian culture with this lecture on its two great epics: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Both are frame narratives that bring together hundreds of smaller stories. Both help establish Vishnu’s importance among other Hindu gods. And both have had a lasting effect on Indian spirituality, politics, and literature.
Podcast
Poetry Darbaar Podcast
Hosted by Lakshya Datta, Poetry Darbaar brings you the poems, the shayaris, the kavitas, and the poets of India - celebrating the best of contemporary Indian poetry across its many languages - including Hindi, English, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, and many more. Through live readings and conversations with the poets themselves, this show will attempt to explore answers to one question: where do the words come from? This podcast is produced by Launchora, and the poems are curated by writer-editor-publisher Namita Gokhale.
Perspectives & Author's Works
The Lowland
National Book Award Finalist Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death. Born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s, and Udayan--charismatic and impulsive--finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America. But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he goes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind--including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife. Masterly suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate, The Lowland is a work of great beauty and complex emotion; an engrossing family saga and a story steeped in history that spans generations and geographies with seamless authenticity. It is Jhumpa Lahiri at the height of her considerable powers.
The Ramayana
The greatest Indian epic, one of the world's supreme masterpieces of storytelling A Penguin Classic A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages. Here, drawing on the work of an eleventh-century poet called Kamban, Narayan employs the skills of a master novelist to re-create the excitement he found in the original. A luminous saga made accessible to new generations of readers, The Ramayana can be enjoyed for its spiritual wisdom, or as a thrilling tale of ancient conflict. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Midnight's Children
A classic novel, in which the man who calls himself the "bomb of Bombay" chronicles the story of a child and a nation that both came into existence in 1947--and examines a whole people's capacity for carrying inherited myths and inventing new ones.
The White Tiger
Introducing a major literary talent,The White Tigeroffers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages ofMurder Weekly("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.Sold in sixteen countries around the world,The White TigerrecallsThe Death of VishnuandBangkok 8in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation -- and a startling, provocative debut.