The historian/writer chooses her favourite novels (and a memoir). Last week, she was crowned winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2024 for her book "Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century".
Speak, Memory
This is my all-time favourite – I've probably read it about 50 times. A profound, honest memoir of exile, it's searing, but at the same time luxuriously beautiful.
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Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy, 1891
I'm a real Hardy fan and could have picked any of his books – but with Tess, there's something deeply tragic about the way terrible things just keep happening to her that I've never been able to get out of my mind.
Middlemarch
George Eliot, 1871
I read this when I was about eight and assumed it was written by a very clever boy. It wasn't until I was 18 that I realised it was by a woman – then I understood. It's a book I return to.
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy, 1997
I love the way the house in this novel is practically its own character, as is the weather. It reminds me a little of Hardy, actually, but it's so much more ferocious. It left me changed, and its imprint is all over "Shadows at Noon". I don't write like Roy at all – very few can – but by God hers is one hell of a book.
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul, 1961
Naipaul is the total opposite of Roy, but his writing is so spare and clear and beautiful. This book made me see the Sugar Islands in a way I'd never seen them before. When my mother, a great reader, gave it to me, I couldn't get over its power.
Oscar and Lucinda
Peter Carey, 1988
I include this book not only because of its absolutely fantastic characters, but because of the way it tells the story of the brutal conquest of Australia against the backdrop of a really rather one-sided love affair. It was among Carey's earliest novels, and of course he went on to write several other brilliant ones.
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