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Manil Suri’s new memoir, A Room in Bombay, describes his coming of age in a single room that he shared with his parents before his move to the U.S. at age 20. Below, the author of the award-winning novel The Death of Vishnu recommends six books set in Indian cities.
‘The Heart is a Shifting Sea’ by Elizabeth Flock (2018)
With surprisingly candid reportage, Flock tracks the lives of three middle-class couples as they navigate life in a newly globalized Mumbai. Each couple finds that the notion of love, so romanticized in Bollywood movies, must be forged into something more practical if they are to survive the city’s myriad challenges. Buy it here.
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‘Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal’ by Sandip Roy (2026)
A fascinating account of Chapal Bhaduri, one of the last iconic female impersonators in Kolkata. In a series of interviews, Chapal takes us from memories of his mother through the rise and fall of his career. A must for understanding how attitudes toward gender and sexuality have evolved in India’s larger cities. Buy it here.
‘The Sari Shop’ by Rupa Bajwa (2004)
Bajwa transports you into the heart of Amritsar, with its glitzy bazaars, dusty slums, and plush mansions. The story she weaves, about the widening gap between India’s classes, is ultimately devastating. Sadly, such stories still play out repeatedly in every corner of the country. Buy it here.
‘Ghachar Ghochar’ by Vivek Shanbhag (2017)
India has deep literary traditions in several regional languages, and this delicious novella, translated from Kannada, is a perfect amuse-bouche. The narrator’s family has moved to an affluent part of Bengaluru, and their attempts to head off meddling outsiders are at times subtle, at times pugnacious, but always hilarious. Buy it here.
‘Land Where I Flee’ by Prajwal Parajuly (2013)
Amma’s grandkids travel to remote and hilly Gangtok (a city “infested with stairs”) to celebrate her 84th birthday. Everyone has an acid tongue and brims with spiteful resentment. The resulting snark-fest makes this one of the funniest Indian novels I’ve ever read. Buy it here.
‘The Painter of Signs’ by R.K. Narayan (1976)
This classic work by one of the founding fathers of Indian fiction is set, like most of his novels, in the unhurried fictional town of Malgudi. Narayan’s bittersweet love story about a hapless painter’s crush on an emotionally distant social worker has lost none of its humor, relevance, or unconventionality. Buy it here.
