biography of indian english writers

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75 Best Indian Authors and their Books in English: The Must-Read List (2020 Update)

[Updated on 26-April-2020]

I’ve been trying to compile this list of Best Indian Authors in the English Language for a long time now. Every time I start, I get stuck up at zeroing in on the names.

There are so many great writers and novelists from India and of Indian origin, in the English language, that it is difficult to keep the list short.

Though I’m not a great fan of literary fictions and tend to incline towards mysteries and thrillers, I have tried my best to be unbiased and impartial.

While creating such lists, it is unavoidable to incline towards one’s preferences and tastes. If you are a fan of romance, you’d prefer Durjoy Dutta over Amish Tripathi; if you are a fan of humour, you’d prefer Sidin Vadukut over Ravinder Singh, and vice versa.

So, I decided to break down the list into different genres.

Also Read : 121 Best English Books by Indian Authors: The Definitive List (2024)

THE ALL-TIME GREATS OF INDIAN ENGLISH WRITING

TOP INDIAN LITERARY FICTION WRITERS

BEST HISTORIANS AND WRITERS OF HISTORY BOOKS FROM INDIA

BEST INDIAN AUTHORS OF RELIGIOUS/MYTHOLOGY BOOKS

BEST INDIAN AUTHORS OF HISTORICAL FICTION BOOKS

BEST MYTHOlOGICAL FICTION WRITERS IN INDIA

THE BEST WRITERS OF ROMANCE NOVELS IN INDIA

BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER AUTHORS IN INDIA

TOP-MOST WRITERS OF SCI-FI/FANTASY NOVELS IN INDIA

BEST CHICK-LIT AUTHORS IN INDIA

BEST AUTHORS OF SELF-HELP AUTHORS IN INDIA

Also Read : 121 Best English Books by Indian Authors: The Definitive List (2018)

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About the Author

Father to Ahaana. Husband to Mayuri. Co-founder at bookGeeks. Engineer at BMM.

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Top 30 Indian English Writers and Their Works

Indian English writers and their works- It’s important to praise the contribution of Indian writers in English literature . Here you will get a list of the best Indian English writers and their works. However, there are hundreds of Indian English authors available but Here I will give you the top 30+ Indian writers in English literature and their works.

It seems important to understand the origin and development of Indian writers in English . Here I will give you important (Exam point of view) Indian English writer’s name and their works for the upcoming competitive examination.

Let me tell you one thing, this post is helpful for those students who are preparing for Ph.D., MA Entrance, UGC NET , UPSC , or any teaching examination.

Top 30 Indian Writers in English Literature and Their Works

• Mulk Raj Anand
• Anita Desai
• Kiran Desai
• R.K Narayan
• Kamala Markendya
• Khuswant Singh
• Arundhati Roy
• Amitav Ghosh
• A.K Ramanujan
• Sri Aurobindo
• Nissim Ezekiel
• Keki Daruwalla
• Vikram Seth
• Mahesh Dattani
• Girish Karnad
• Badal Sarkar
• Vijaya Tendulkar
• Jayant Mahapatra
• Mina Alexandar
• Ruskin Bond
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Michael Madhusudan Dutt
• Attia Hosain
• Om Prakash Valmiki
• Maheshsweta Devi
• Sarojini Naidu

List of Famous Indian Writers in English

1- Anita Desai

• She was born on 24th June 1937 in Mussoorie. Her father was a Bengali and her mother was a German.
• She got her early education in Delhi
• She completed her graduation in English literature in 1957, at Delhi University. She was married to Ashwin Desai
• She had written 10 novels and many short stories. She started writing prose at the age of 7. Here stories were published in children’s magazines. Here first story Circus Cat Alley Cot was published in 1957 in Thought.
• Her second story, How Gently’s The Mist was published in ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ in 1958.
• Her collection of stories for children The Peacock Garden Cat on a House Boat and Village by the sea.
• Circus Cat Alley Cot (1957) First Stories
• How Gentle The Mist (1958)
• The Peacock Garden
• Cat on a House Boat
• Village by the sea
• Cry the Peacock (1963) first novel
• Voices in the City (1965) Second Novel
• Bye Bye Black Bird (1975) Third Novel
• Where Shall We Go This Summer (1975)
• The fire in the Mountain
• Baumgartner’s Bombay

Desai always tries to show the psychological state of her characters because she thinks that the inner life of a man and woman decides his or her character rather than the external condition of life.

She uses symbols and images to describe the suffering of the mind. She was award with Sahitya Academy Award in 1978.

2- Vikram Seth

• Vikram Seth was born on 20th June 1952 in Calcutta.
• He went to London in 1957 and started his profession in the United Nation
• Vikram Seth is a polyglot has learned Welsh, German, French, English, Hindi, and Urdu
• Awarded With Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1985)
• Pravasi Bharatiya Samman-2005
• Padmashree in 2007
• First successful work was The Travel Book from Heaven Lake (1983)
• The Golden Gate-1986
• An Equal Music-1999
• A Suitable Boy-1993
• A Suitable Girl-2013
• Mappings-1980
• The Traveller -2008
• Beastly Tales-1991
• The Frog and the -1Nightingale-1994
• The Humble Administrator’s Garden-1985
• All You Who Sleep Tonight- 1990

3- Nissim Ezekiel

• Nissim Ezekiel is an Indian English poet, He studied English at Wilson College, Bombay.
• He is married and has three children.
• He has worked as the editor of a number o journals including. The Quest, Illustrate Weekly of India.
• Award- Padma Shri (1988), Sahitya Academy Award (1983)
• A time to change and other poems, London (1952)
• Sixty Poems, Bombay (1953)
• The Thrid, Bombay (1959)
• The Unfinished Man (1960)
• The Exact Name (1965)
• Hymns in Darkness and poster Prayers
• Nalini (Drama)
• The Sleepwalkers (Drama)
• Who Needs no Introduction?
• Marriage Poem
• Songs of Derivation

4- Khuswant Singh

• He was born on 2nd February 1915 in Pakistan
• He was given the Rockefeller Grant in 1966. He was elected a member of Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986
• He was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1974, Padma Vibhushan in 2007
• Sahitya Academy Award in 2010
• Train to Pakistan in 1956
• I shall not Hear the Nightingale in 1956
• A Sangam City
• The Company of Women
• The Portrait of A Lady
• Sex, Scotch and Scholarship
• Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry
• Truth, Love, and A little of Malice.
• A History of the Sikhs
• The Sunset Club
• Sahibs who loved India
• Delhi A Novel
• The Free Thinker’s Prayer Book

5- R.K Narayan

• R.K Narayan is an eminent Indian English novelist. He was born in 1906 in Madras.
•  R stands for his village name- Rasipuram and K stand for the name of his father Krishnaswami Iyer.
• Most of the works based on the fictional town ‘Malgudi’.
• Sahitya Academy Award For The Guide
• M Days – Autobiography
• Bachelor of Arts (Novel)
• The Dark Room (1938)
• Malgudi Days- Collection of Short Stories
• Cyclon and other stories
• The English Teacher (1945)
• Mr. Sampath (1945)
• Astrologer’s Day and other stories (1947)
• Financial Expert
• Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
• The Lovely Road
• My Dateless Diary- An Autobiography
• The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1962)
• The Sweet Vendor
• A Horse and Two Goats
• The Painter of Sign

6- Mulk Raj Anand

• Mulk Ran Anand was born on 12th December 1905 in Peshwar. Hist first novel was Untouchable which was published in 1935
• He founded an art Magazine Marg. His Morning Face won Sahitya Academy Award in 1972.
• Seven Sumers
• The Big Heart
• Untouchable (1935)
• Coolie (1936)
• The Village (1939)
• The Sword and the Sickle (1942)
• The Old Woman and the Cow
• Two Leaves and a Bud (1937)
• Across the Black Waters
• The Private Life of an Indian Prince
• A Lamentation on the Death of a Master of Arts

7- Ruskin Bond

• Ruskin Bond is an award-winning Indian author of Britsh descent. His first short stories at the age of 16.
• Movies- The Blue Umbrella in 2007, (National Award), Khoon Maaf (Susanna’s Seven Husbands)
• Sahitya Academy Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra.
• He was awarded the Padma Shri in 199 and Padma Bhusan in 2014.
• The Blue Umbrella
• Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra
• A Fight of Pigeons
• The Chery Tree
• A Golf Story
• A Prospect of Flower
• Garland of Memories
• frogs in the fountain
• Ghost Stories from the Raj
• Funny Side UP
• Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas
• Dust on the Mountains
• A Season of Ghosts
• Tigers Forever
• A Town Called Dehra
• At school with Ruskin Bond
• The Island of Trees
• The Night Train at Deoli and Other stories
• A Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings
• The Adventures of Rusty
• Crazy times with Uncle Ken
• The Death Of Trees
• Tales and Legends from India
• Time stops at Shamli
• A Tiger In The House
• Four Feathers
• School Days
• Ranji’s Wonderful Bat
• The Tiger In The tunnel
• The Hidden Pool
• Mr. Oliver’s Diary
• The Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk
• The Ruskin Bond Children’s Omnibus
• Rusty, the Boy from the Hills
• The Monkey Trouble
• Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature
• Tigers For Dinner: Tall Tales By Jim Corbett’s Khansama
• The Rupa Book of Haunted Houses
• The Very Best of Ruskin Bond — The Writer on the Hill
• The Rupa Book of Eerie Stories
• The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond’s Himalayan Tales
• The Penguin Book of Indian Ghost Stories
• The Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories

8- Keki N Daruwalla

• Keki Nasserwanji Daruwalla was born in Lahore in January 1937, After taking his Master’s degree in English literature from Punjab University
• His first book of poems Under Orion was published in 1970, Apparition in April 1971
• Daruwalla is known for his bitter, satiric tone and violence.
• Sahitya Akademi Award and Commonwealth Poetry Award
• Padmashir in 2014
• Under Orion 1970
• Winter Poems 1980
• The crossing of Rivers 1985
• Apparition in April 1971
• The Map Maker Poems 2022
• A House in Ranikhet 2003
• The Scarecrow and the Ghost 2004
• The Keeper of the Dead (Sahitya Akademy Award)1984
• Crossing the River

9- Kamala Das

• Kamala Suraiyya an internationally renowned poet, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and novelist
• Editor of Mathrubhum, She began writing at the age of six.
• Pen Name Madhvikutty
• Kerala Sahitya Academy, Shortlisted for Nobel Prize in Literature, PEN Asian poetry Prize
• Summer in Calcutta (1965)
• Alphabet of Lust (1976)
• My Story (1976) Autobiographical
• The Descendent
• The Stranger Time
• A Doll for the child prostitute (1977)
• Padmavati the Harlot and other stories
• The Old Playhouse other poems

10- Rabindra Nath Tagore

• Born on 7th May 1861 at Jorasanko in Calcutta, His father Devendranath Tagore
• Rabindra Nath was influenced by Upanishads, Kalidas, Dante, and Shakespeare
• He wrote Banphul a narrative poem and Bhagna Haridaya
• Nobel Prize for Gitanjali- Mahatma Gandhi Called ‘Gurudev’
• He was the first Asian who received the Nobel Prize.
• He founded the Vishwabharati University in Bholpore, West Bengal.
• The Broken Nest
• The Home and the World
• The Genius of Valmiki
• The Sacrifice
• The Post Office
• The Home Comming
• The Kabuliwallah
• My Reminiscences (Autobiography)
• The Ascetic
• Red Oleanders
• The Cycle of Spring
• The Fugitive
• Karna and Kunti
• Kacha and Devyani
• The Mother’s prayer
• The King and the Queen

11- Arundhati Roy 

• She was born on 24th November in 1961 in Bengal. Her Name is Suzanna Arundhati Roy.
• She worked as a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Urban Affairs.
• Her first novel ‘The God of Small Things’ was published in 1997
• It was awarded the Booker prize in London 1997,
• The Cost of Living was published in 1999
• The God of Small Things (1997) Nobel Prize
• War is Peace
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice-2002
• The End of Imagination
• The Greater Common Good
• An Ordinary Persons Guide to Emperor
• War Talk-2003
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

12- Sarojini Naidu

• She was born on 13th February 1879 in Hyderabad. Her father was an Alchemy, Her mother was a lyricist
• In 192, she was elected the president of the Indian National Congress.
• She was called The Nightingale of India
• The Lady of the Lake 1892
• Golden Threshold of 1905
• Innovation to India
• The Bird of Time -1912
• The Second Fluet-193
•  The Feathers of Dawn -1961
• Indian Weavers
• The Palanquin Berbers
• The Gift of India
• Bangle-seller
• The Anther of Love and Village Song

13- Raja Rao

• He was born on 19th November 1908 in Mysore
• His works are deeply metaphysics
• Awarded Neustadt International Prize For Literature
• Sahitya Akademi Award (1964)
• Padma Bhusan (1969)
• Padma Vibhusan (2007)
• Kanthapura (1938) First Novel
• The Cow of Barricades (1947)
• The Serpent and the Rope (1960) Second Novel
• A Cat and Shakespeare
• On the Ganga Ghat
• Comrade Kirillov
• The Chessmaster and his more
• Changing India
• The Policeman and the Rose
• The Meaning of India

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63 Notable Writers and Poets to discover in Indian Writing

• March 16, 2022
• One Comment

Introduction to Indian Writing

Indian writing in English is a tradition that goes back to colonial times. Since then, a fascinating category of literature has emerged. Indian writers have pushed the frontier of the language, creating new traditions across genres. The earliest writers lived and worked during the nineteenth century. British India, by that time, had a system of western education for the elite, and as a result, a generation grew up able to express itself in the language of the colonizers.

For a long time, there was no real acknowledgment for Indian writing. They did not fit into a previously known category of Indian literature and were perceived to not be as good as western writers. Since then, however, Indian Writing has gone through various transformations.

The first publishing house that published English paperbacks in India was Jaico Publishing House. It was established in 1946. They were the first ones to publish English translations of writings in regional languages from across the country. Till a decade ago, there were no awards instituted that could acknowledge original writing in English in the country. Today, however, a list of highly respected Indian awards exists. Some of these include the Sahitya Akademi Award, JCB Prize for Literature, and The Hindu Literary Prize.

In its history of almost two centuries, Indian writing in English has grown and expanded in unimaginable ways. Covering every genre and creating a space for themselves, Indian writers in English have established their own flourishing literary tradition.

If you are a writer yourself, here’s a list of 40 Literary Magazines to Submit Short-stories, Non fiction and Poetry in India .

The following is a list of some of the notable figures of writers and poets who have contributed immensely to Indian Writing.

Indian Authors (Based in India)

Arundhathi subramaniam.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet and writer on spirituality and culture. She has worked over the years as a poetry editor, curator, and journalist on literature, classical dance, and theatre.

• Type of writing: Mainly poetry. Notable Works in Indian Writing : When God is a Traveller, Women Who Wear Only Themselves, Love Without A Story
• Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships.

Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist, and independent curator.

• Type of writing: Poetry, Essayist and Translations.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Zones of Assault, The Cartographer’s Apprentice, Central Time, Jonahwhale, The Sleepwalker’s Archive and Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985–2005
• Awards: Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation.

Arunava Sinha

Arunava Sinha is a critically acclaimed translator. He translates classic, modern, and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English

• Type of writing: Translations.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Khwabnama, The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told, Dozakhnama
• Awards: 6th Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award 2022, Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, winner of the Muse India translation award (2013), shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009) and the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize and longlisted for the Best Translated Book award, USA, 2018.

The importance of translators and their work can sometimes be underestimated. Here’s a list of 13 Awards in India for Translations .

Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Michael Madhusudan Dutt was a pioneer in the field of Indian writing in English. Born in Bengal in 1824, he came to scorn Bengali culture and language. He wrote poetry in English and wanted to be counted as a member of the hall of fame of British poets. He converted to Christianity.

• Type of writing: Mainly poetry.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Captive Ladie, King Porus, Sonnets and Other Poems

Khushwant Singh

Khushwant Singh was born in a part of Punjab that is in present-day Pakistan. He was a public figure of considerable repute. His career included serving in the Rajya Sabha and working in the Indian Foreign Service. He was also the editor of various newspapers and literary magazines. His writing is known for its wit and compassion.

• Type of writer: He has written an impressive number of novels, as well as several short stories.
• Notable works: Train to Pakistan, The Company of Women, Delhi: A Novel
• Awards in Indian Writing : Singh was a Fellow of King’s College London and received a Sahitya Akademi Fellowship. He was awarded a Padma Bhushan, which he returned as a token of protest. Later, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India.

Nissim Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel was born in 1924 in Mumbai. As an Indian Jewish writer, he had a vantage point not shared by many others. An important figure in post-independence Indian Literature, he is known for his contribution to Indian English poetry.

• Type of writer: Poetry and plays.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Latter-Day Psalms
• Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Shri

Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand was one of the earliest Indian writers in English to write about the oppression of the caste system. He wrote of the experiences of the lower castes. His work tended to be political, and some even consider it revolutionary. . He included Punjabi and Hindustani phrases in his writing, creating a new form of expression.

• Type of writer: Anand wrote novels, short stories, and also several volumes of autobiography
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Two Leaves and a Bud, Untouchable, Coolie
• Awards: Padma Bhushan, Sahitya Akademi Award, International Peace Prize

Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu is one of the most prominent writers in Independence-era India. Known as the ‘Nightingale of India’ Naidu wrote and worked for women’s emancipation and anti-imperialism. She was the first woman to be a governor in the dominion of India and was a vocal follower of Mahatma Gandhi. As a writer, she is known for her evocative imagery.

• Type of writer: Primarily a poet.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : In the Bazaars of Hyderabad

If you are a Hindi writer, here’s a list of 22 Literary Magazines in Hindi – Publish Poetry, Short Stories, and Non-fiction Online .

R. K. Narayan

Any discussion of Indian writing in English is incomplete without a mention of R.K Narayan. His writing is credited with bringing alive the Indian experience with a mystery of language. His best work is infused with wit, humour, and compassion. His career spanned around 60 years. In that time, he created fictional settings and characters that are as alive today as they were when they were written.

• Type of writer: Narayan is best known for his short stories and novels. However he also
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Swami and Friends, Malgudi Days
• Awards: Padma Vibhushan, Sahitya Akademi Award. He was also awarded the AC Benson Medal and honorary membership by the Royal Society of Literature. Delhi University, University of Leeds, and the University of Mysore conferred honorary doctorates upon him.

Vikram Seth

A force in modern Indian writing in English, Vikram Seth is an important writer in the genre. Known for his rich descriptions and subtle storytelling, Seth has received international acclaim. He was born in Kolkata and educated in India and Britain.

• Type of writer: Best known for his novels, Seth has also published some poetry and nonfiction, as well as children’s fiction.
• Notable work in Indian Writing : A Suitable Boy, An Equal Music, The Golden Gate
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize, Commonwealth Poetry Prize, Padma Shri, Order of the British Empire (Commander), WH Smith Literary Award.

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh has contributed greatly to the canon of Indian writing in English. Born in Kolkata and educated in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria, he spent his early years in many different places.

• Type of writer: Ghosh is primarily a novelist.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Shadow Lines, The Hungry Tide, The Ibis Trilogy, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace
• Notable Awards: Jnanpith Award, Sahitya Akademi Award, Ananda Puruskar, Padma Shri, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize

A.K Ramanujan

Ramanujan was a writer who wrote extensively in both English and Kannada. In his lifetime, he wrote a number of essays and research papers but is best remembered for his poems. Ramanujan’s poetry is some of the most outstanding works in Indian poetry in the English language.

• Type of writer: Best known for poetry, though his work spans many genres.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Striders, Selected Poems
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Shri, MacArthur Fellowship

Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor is an established politician, writer, and intellectual. He has published work across genres, from novels to non-fiction. He is a member of Parliament, a member of the Indian National Congress, and has been a public figure for decades.

• Type of writer: Tharoor is a versatile writer. His published work spans different genres.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Great Indian Novel, Why I Am A Hindu
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is a well-known Indian writer and activist. An important voice of the left, she has written both fiction and nonfiction. Her novels as well as her essays have received acclaim. Her novel ‘The God of Small Things’ became the best-selling book by a resident Indian author.

• Type of writer: Roy started her career as a screenwriter. She has written several novels. She is also known for her articles and essays on various political, economic, social, and humanitarian issues.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The God of Small Things, The Ministry of Happiness
• Notable Awards: Booker Prize, Orwell Award. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award but refused it in protest of certain policies of the Indian Government.

Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond is of British descent, although his nationality is Indian, and he has been a lifetime resident of India. He is the beloved author of many books, short stories, poems, and children’s books. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, and has immortalized the way of life in the Himalayan regions in his work.

• Type of writer: Bond has written novels, short stories, and poems. He has also written autobiographical accounts and children’s literature.
• Notable Work in Indian Writing : Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, The Blue Umbrella, The Room on the Roof
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Awards, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri

Anita Desai

Anita Desai has received international acclaim for her novels. Born in 1937, she has had an extensive writing career and has published many books. One of her novels, ‘In Custody’ was adapted into a screenplay and made into a film that received critical acclaim.

• Type of writer: Primarily a novelist.
• Notable Work in Indian Writing : Clear Light of Day, Baumgartner’s Bombay, In Custody
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Bhushan, Neil Gunn Prize, Benson Medal (Royal Society of Literature). She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize on three occasions.

Romila Thapar

Romila Thapar is considered to be an academic powerhouse and an important voice in the study of Indian History.

• Type of writer: Historian.
• Notable Work in Indian Writing : Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, History and Beyond, Cultural Transaction and Early India: Tradition and Patronage and Somanatha: The Many Voices of History.
• Notable Awards: Kluge Prize (2008)

Ramchandra Guha

Ramchandra Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer, and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental, and cricket history, and the field of economics.

• Type of writer: Economist and Essayist.
• Notable Work in Indian Writing : India after Gandhi · Gandhi Before India · Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World
• Notable Awards: R. K. Narayan Prize (2003)

Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai is an internationally acclaimed author and daughter of Anita Desai. She is known for her rich descriptions and characterization. She is mainly a writer of fiction.

• Type of writer: Primarily a novelist
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, The Inheritance of Loss
• Notable Awards: Man Booker Prize, Berlin Prize Fellowship, Betty Trask Award

If you are looking for guidance in your writing journey, here’s a list of Top writing coaches and writing mentors .

Gieve Patel

Gieve Patel is best known for his poetry, but he is also an accomplished playwright and painter. He has written thirteen plays and has exhibited his paintings all over the world. His writing is sensitive, reflective, and often concerned with the destruction of nature. He is also a prang doctor.

• Type of writer: Known mainly for his poetry
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Mirrored Mirroring, Body, How Do You Withstand
• Notable Awards: Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, Rockefeller Fellowships. His poetry is included in ‘Anthology of Indian Poetry’

Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto is an important figure in modern Indian writing. With a Goan Roman Catholic background, he offers a unique perspective on Indian life. This reflects in his writing.

• Type of writer: Pinto has written poetry, short stories, novels, and journalistic articles. He is also a translator.
• Notable work in Indian Writing : Em and the Big Hoom, Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, Surviving Women
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, The Hindu Literary Award, Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema

Abhishek Majumdar

Abhishek Majumdar is an Indian playwright. He is also a theatre director, and his plays have received international acclaim.

• Type of writer: Playwright
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Djinns of Eidgah, Harlesden High Street, Pah-La
• Notable awards: MetroPlus Playwriting award, Shankar Nag Theatre Award

Rochelle Potkar

Rochelle Potkar is a contemporary poet, writer, and actor. She has carved out a space for herself in the modern canon of Indian writers.

• Type of writer: She writes fiction and poetry
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, Paper Asylum
• Notable Awards: Charles Wallace Writers’ fellow, Norton Girault Literary Prize

Namita Gokhale

Namita Gokhale is an established Indian author. She is also the co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

• Type of writer: She has received widespread recognition for her novels, but has also written non fiction.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Things to Leave Behind, The Blind Matriarch
• Notable awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, International Dublin Literary Award

Mahesh Dattani

An icon in Indian theatre, Mahesh Dattani is a writer, actor, and director. He was the first playwright to write in English and was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award.

• Type of Writer: Playwright, screenwriter
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Dance Like a Man, The Big Fat City
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award

Mani Rao is a translator and a poet. Interested in Sanskrit literature, she translated the Bhagavad Gita in English verse, as well as the works of the poet Kalidasa. She received much recognition for her sensitive translation of both. She has also written ten collections of poetry.

• Type of writer: Poet and translator
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Bhagavad Gita, Salt, Sing to Me
• Notable Awards: Visiting fellow at Iowa International Writing Programme

Amrita Pritam

Amrita Pritam was an Indian novelist, essayist, and poet, who wrote in Punjabi and Hindi.

• Type of writer: Fictionist and Essayist
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Pinjar, Sunahade
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Bharatiya Jnanpith, Padma Shri, Padma Vibhushan, and the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

Munshi Premchand was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani literature. He was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Godaan, Gaban, Nirmala
• Notable Awards: Premchand was commemorated with the issue of a special 30-paise postage stamp by India Post.

Krishna Sobti

Krishna Sobti was an Indian Hindi-language fiction writer and essayist.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Zindaginama
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and Jnanpith Award for her contribution to Indian literature.

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan is an Indian author, scholar, and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil.

• Type of writer: Fictionist, Short Story WRiter and Essayist
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : One Part Woman, Current Show
• Notable Awards: Originally written in Tamil under the name  Madhorubagan  and then later translated in English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan as  One Part Woman . Aniruddhan Vasudevan was awarded Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize (2016). The book was also included in the longlist for the 2018 National Book Award in the “Translated Literature” category.

You should also check out our blog post about 82 Women Writers in India .

Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga shot to the limelight after the publication of his novel, ‘The White Tiger’. Before moving into fiction writing, Adiga worked as a journalist.

• Type of writer: Novelist and journalist. He has also written short stories.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The White Tiger
• Notable Awards: Man Booker Prize

Shreekumar Verma

A versatile writer, Shreekumar Verma has written across genres. He was born in Kerala and spent much of his life in Tamil Nadu.

• Type of Writer: Verma is a poet, playwright, newspaper columnist and novelist.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Lament of Mohini, Maria’s Room
• Notable Awards: Charles Wallace Fellowship, R.K Narayan Award for Excellence in Writing

Shiv Krishna Kumar

Born in Lahore in undivided India in 1921, Shiv K. Kumar moved to Delhi after partition. He is best known for his poetry. It appears in such anthologies as ‘Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets’. He also wrote in other forms and has authored a large number of books.

• Type of writer: Poet, novelist, playwrights, short story writer, translator, critic.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Trapfalls in the Sky, Subterfuges, Woolgathering
• Notable Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award, Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature, Padma Bhushan

Chetan Bhagat

A bestselling novelist, Chetan Bhagat is one of the most widely read Indian authors writing in English. He was included in Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010.

• Type of writer: Primarily novelist although he has written in other forms, including a screenplay.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Half Girlfriend, Five Point Someone
• Notable Awards: Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay, CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2014 (Entertainment category)

Anuja Chauhan

Anuja Chauhan is a bestselling author who got her start in the advertising world. She was the brain behind some of India’s most successful advertising programs. She quit advertising to become a full-time writer and has since published many successful books.

• Type of writer: Novelist
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Zoya Factor, Those Pricey Thakur Girls
• Notable Awards: Femina Women Achievers Award (Literary contribution), FICCI Ladies Organisation- Contribution to Literature

Preeti Shenoy

Preeti Shenoy is the author of more than twelve compelling books that have gained widespread recognition. She has been nominated for the Forbes 100 most influential celebrities in India multiple times.

• Type of writer: Novelist, essayist, short story writer.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Life Is What You Make It, 34 Bubblegums and Candies
• Notable Awards: Indian of the Year- Brands Academy, Business Excellence Award- New Delhi Management Institute.

Ashwin Sanghi

Ashwin Sanghi ranks among India’s highest-selling English fiction authors.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key, The Sialkot Saga, Keepers of the Kalachakra and The Vault of Vishnu in the  Bharat Series
• Notable Awards: Crossword Popular Choice Award 2012, Atta Galatta Popular Choice Award 2018, WBR Iconic Achievers Award 2018 and the Lit-O-Fest Literature Legend Award 2018.

Anand Neelakantan

Anand Neelakantan is an Indian author, columnist, screenwriter, and public speaker. He is known for writing mythological fiction.

• Type of writer: Mythological Fiction
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Asura and Ajaya
• Notable Awards: Crossword Book Awards

Devdutt Pattnaik

Devdutt Pattnaik is an Indian mythologist, speaker, illustrator, and author, known for his writing on Hindu sacred lore, legends, folklore, fables, and parables. His work focuses largely on the areas of religion, mythology, and management.

• Type of writer: Mythological Fiction and Nonfiction
• Notable Works: Gita, Jaya

Anuja Chandramouli

Anuja Chandramouli is an Indian author of fantasy and historical fiction.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Arjuna, Ganga, Karthikeya

Neil D’Silva

With several bestselling books to his credit, Neil D’Silva is a known name in the Indian literary world.

• Type of writer: Horror
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Maya’s New Husband, Yakshini

Shatrujeeth Nath

Shatrujeet Nath is the creator of the runaway national bestseller series Vikramaditya Veergatha, a four-book mytho-fantasy arc.

• Type of writer: Fantasy Fiction
• Notable Works: Karachi Deception, The Guardians of the Halahala, The Conspiracy at Meru, The Vengeance of Indra and The Wrath of the Hellfires.

Kanchana Banerjee

Kanchana Banerjee writes women-centric suspense thrillers.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Nobody’s Child, A Forgotten Affair

Amish Tripathi, also known as Amish in the literary circles, popularised Indian mythology in his ‘Shiva Trilogy’ and the ‘Ram Chandra Series’. The Shiva Trilogy became the fast-selling book series in the history of Indian publishing.

• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Shiva Trilogy, Ram Chandra series.
• Notable Awards: Golden Book Award, Hello Hall of Fame Award, Kalinga International Literary Award.

Durjoy Datta

Durjoy Datta is a well-known novelist and screenwriter. His books are widely read and mostly deal with romantic relationships in modern India.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Girl of My Dreams, The Perfect Us
• Notable Awards: Crossword Book Award- Popular Choice Award, 2009 The Times of India’s ‘Young Achiever’

Advaita Kala

Advaita Kala is a popular Indian writer. Her novels are widely read and her screenplays have enjoyed box office success.

• Type of writer: Novelist, screenwriter
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Almost Single, Kahaani
• Notable Awards: Screen Award for Best Story, Star Guild Award for Best Story

Nikita Singh

Nikita Singh is an Indian Writer who predominantly writes romance novels.

• Type of writer: Novelist – Romance Writer
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Reason is You, Every Time It Rains, Like a Love Song, The Promise, and After All This Time.
• Notable Awards: Nominated for a First International Young Author Award (2018)

Sachin Garg

Sachin Garg is an Indian bestselling novelist, a first-generation entrepreneur, publisher, and speaker, best known for his semi-autobiographical chronicles.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Never Let Me Go, It’s First Love, Just Like The Last One, I’m Not Twenty Four, I Have Been Nineteen For Five Years, Come on- inner peace…I don’t have all day.

Kiran Manral

Kiran Manral is an Indian author based in Mumbai

• Type of writer: Novelist, essayist and short story writer.
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Reluctant Detective, Karmic Kids, Missing, Presumed Dead
• Notable Awards: Long listed for the Saboteur Awards UK,

Anita Nair is an Indian novelist who writes her books in English-language.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Lessons in Forgetting, Ladies Coupe, Mistress.
• Notable Awards: Arch of Excellence Award by the All India Achievers’ Conference, New Delhi for Literature, iBeraturpreis, finalist, Germany, FLO FICCI Women Achievers Award, for literature, Montblanc honored her with the launch of the Special Edition writing instrument in India; for her novel contribution to literature, enforcing cross cultural endeavors and enlightening experiences that have transcended an inexhaustible diversity of forms – barriers of language, cultures and identities, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for her contribution to literature and culture, The Hindu Literary Prize shortlist, Global Ambassador for Women for Expo, Crossword Book Award, Jury Award, Children’s category.

Check out our Interview with Anukriti Upadhyay , winner of Sushila Devi Award 2021 for the best work of fiction written by a woman author.

Madhuri Banerjee

Madhuri Banerjee is an Indian author, columnist, and screenwriter.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Losing my Virginty and Other Dumb Ideas

Hussain Zaidi

S. Hussain Zaidi is an Indian author and former investigative journalist.

• Type of writer: Novelist and Crime Fiction Writer
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Dongri to Dubai, Mafia Queens of Mumbai

Ravinder Singh

Ravinder Singh is an Indian software engineer and author of nine novels.

• Type of writer: Romance Writer
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : I too had a love story

Twinkle Khanna

A former film actress of Bollywood fame, Twinkle Khanna has also made her mark on the bestsellers list with her books.

• Type of writer: Generally writes comedic nonfiction and fiction.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Mrs. Funnybones
• Notable awards: Crossword Popular Non-Fiction Award, India Today Woman Writer of the Year

Authors of Indian Origin (Based in other countries)

Vish dhamija.

Vish Dhamija is a British Indian crime-fiction writer.

• Notable Works in Indian Writing: Nothing Lasts Forever
• Awards: Long-listed for “Vodafone-Crossword Book Award”

Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander was born in India but spent most of her childhood in Sudan. She did her Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham. She then lived in India for some time, before marrying an American and moving to New York.

• Type of writer: Poet, novelist, essayist, researcher. She has also written memoirs.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Fault Lines, Illiterate Heart
• Notable Awards: PEN Open Book Award, 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award from the South Asian Literary Association for contributions to American Literature.

Lakshmi Holmström

Lakshmi Holmström was a British Indian author and translator. She was born and raised in India but shifted to Britain after finishing her undergraduate course.

• Type of writer: She translated Tamil fiction to English. She was also a writer in her own right, as well as a literary critic.
• Notable works: In a Forest, A Deer
• Notable awards: Crossword Book Award, appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American author and poet.

• Type of writer: Novelist and Poet
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Queen of Dreams, One Amazing Thing, Palace of Illusions, Oleander Girl and Before We Visit the Goddess.
• Notable Awards: Bluebonnet Award, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, Booklist Editor’s Choice, Pacific Northwest Young Reader’s Choice Award Master List and the Rebecca Caudill Award Master List.

If you are an aspiring author, check out our article on 17 Types of Creative Writing .

Salman Rushdie

One of the most controversial figures in modern Indian literature, Salman Rushdie is a British American novelist. In 1989, a fatwa (order to kill) was issued against him, and he was placed under the protection of the British police.

• Type of writer: Known primarily as a novelist, although he has also written children’s fiction and nonfiction.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : Midnight’s Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Notable awards: Knighthood, Golden PEN Award, Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism (Harvard University)

Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry is a Canadian author born in India. His novels are set in India, explored sensitively from a Parsi perspective.

• Notable works in Indian Writing : Such a Long Journey, Family Matters, A Fine Balance
• Notable awards: Commonwealth Writers Prize, Trillium Award, Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Avni Doshi is an American novelist currently based in Dubai. She was born in New Jersey to immigrants from India. 

• Notable Works in Indian Writing : Burnt Sugar, Girl in White Cotton
• Notable Awards: Shortlisted for Booker Prize – 2020

William Darlymple

William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian, art historian, and curator, as well as a broadcaster, critic, and photographer. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world’s largest writers festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.

• Type of writer: History Writer
• Notable Works in Indian Writing : The Anarchy, City of Djinns
• Notable Awards: Wolfson Prize for History, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński, the Arthur Ross Medal of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. Five times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History.

Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is the award-winning author of several novels. She is an Indian American and writes in English and Italian.

• Type of writer: Known for her novels, though she also writes poetry and nonfiction.
• Notable works in Indian Writing : The Lowland, The Interpreter of Maladies
• Notable awards: Pulitzer Prize, Asian American Literary Award, National Humanities Medal

Indian writing in English is a rich tradition with a history. Different writers have contributed to its cannon over the centuries in their own way. Like in any other pursuit and tradition, there are problems in the world of Indian writing in English.

Perhaps the most pertinent is that, at the end of the day, there is only a minuscule minority of the population that reads and writes in English. While this in itself is not a problem, it can mean a lack of active engagement with contemporaries on the part of the writers. It can also mean not enough feedback and communication between the writers and their readers, or indeed, constructively critical feedback.

This is now changing, and we hope to see an even more robust literary community for Indian writing in English. As for you dear reader,  start with whichever genre interests you more, and pick up a book!

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One Response

I’m happy to see some of the most well-known Indian writers represented here. Their literary efforts have had a significant influence on readers and have formed an important part of India’s cultural history. This list powerfully illustrates the nation’s literary diversity and serves as a reminder of the importance of narrative. I’ll refer back to this list whenever I want to read anything interesting. Congratulations on assembling such a terrific lineup!

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Indian Writers in English

Though foreign in its origin, English has been adopted in India as a language of education and literary expression besides being an important medium of communication amongst the people of various regions. The beginning of Indian literature in English is traced to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, by which time English education was more or less firmly established in the three major centres of British power in India – Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833) was the pioneer of Indian writing in English. Roy insisted that for India to be included among the world’s nations, education in English was essential. He, therefore, campaigned for introduction of scientific education in India through the English medium.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was followed in the early 19th century in Bengal by the poets Henry Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Dutt started out writing epic verse in English, but returned to his native Bengali later in life. Toru Dutt’s works including ‘ Ancient Ballads ’ and ‘ Legends of Hindustan ’ and Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s novel ‘ Rajmohan’s Wife ’ have received academic acceptance as the earliest examples of Indian literature written in English. However, the most famous literary figure of this era was Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for his book ‘ Gitanjali ’, which is a free rendering of his poems in Bengali.

Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was a great poetess whose romanticism charmed readers in India and abroad. Her ‘ Golden Threshold ’ (1905) and ‘ The Broken Wing ’ (1917) are works of great literary merit. Aurobindo Gosh (1872-1950) was a poet philosopher and sage, whose ‘ Savitri ’ and ‘ Life Divine ’ are among the outstanding works in English literature.

The freedom struggle resulted in a revolutionary brand of writing that voiced sentiments against the British Empire. Several political leaders from different parts of the country emerged as literary figures such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar and T. Prakasham. English language became a sharp and strong instrument in the hands of Gandhiji, who edited papers like ‘Young India’ and ‘Harijan ‘. He also wrote his autobiography, ‘My Experiments with Truth ‘, which is known for its literary flair. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) stands out as another prominent leader who excelled in writing prose. He is particularly remembered for his ‘ Glimpses of World History ’ , ‘ Discovery of India ’ and ‘ An Autobiography ’ (1936).

Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao were among the earliest Indian novelist writing in English, who began to write in the early thirties.  Mulk Raj Anand (b.1905), best known for his short story ‘The Lost Child’ , has written numerous works of prose, poetry and drama. His novels ‘ Coolie ’ (1933), ‘ Untouchable ’ (1935) and ‘ The Woman and the Cow ’ (1960) reveal his concern for the downtrodden and underprivileged in India. R.K. Narayan is another prolific figure in Indian English writing. Most of his work, starting from his first novel ‘ Swami and Friends ’ (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi, which captures the Indian ethos in its entirety while having a unique identity of its own. ‘ Bachelor of Arts ’ (1937), ‘ The Financial Expert ’ (1952), ‘ The Guide ’ (1959) and ‘ Waiting for the Mahatma ’ (1955) are his other popular novels. The last of the harbingers of Indian English literature is Raja Rao (1909-2006), whose novel ‘ Kanthapura ’ (1938), set in rural India, established him as a major figure on the Indian literary scene. Raja Rao’s other three novels are ‘ The Serpent and the Rope ’ (1960) and ‘ The Cat and Shakespeare ’ (1965).  Nirad C. Choudhuri (1897-1999) was another internationally renowned Indian writer whose autobiography ‘ An Unknown Indian ’ (1951) catapulted him into a celebrated international author.

Later novelists like Kamala Markandaya (‘ Nectar in a Sieve ’, and ‘ A Silence of Desire ’), Manohar Malgaonkar (‘ Distant Drum ’, ‘ A Bend in the Ganges ’ and ‘ The Devil’s Wind ’), Anita Desai (‘ Clear Light of Day ’, ‘ Fire on the Mountain ’ and ‘ Games at Twilight ’) and Nayantara Sehgal captured the spirit of an independent India.

In the 1980’s and 90’s, India emerged as a major literary nation. Salman Rushdie’s ‘ Midnight’s Children ’ became a rage around the world, even winning the Booker Prize. The worldwide success of Vikram Seth’s ‘ The Golden Gate ’ made him the first writer of the Indian Diaspora to enter the sphere of international writers and leave an indelible mark on the global literary scene. Other novelists of repute during the contemporary times include Shobha De (‘ Selective Memory ’), G.V.Desani, M.Ananthanarayanan, Bhadani Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, O.V. Vijayan, Allan Sealy (‘ The Trotternama ’), Shashi Tharoor (‘ The Great Indian Novel ’), Amitav Ghosh (‘ Shadow Lines ’), Upamanyu Chatterjee (‘ English August ’), Raj Kamal Jha (‘ The Blue Bedspread ’), Amit Chaudhuri (‘ A New World ’), Pankaj Mishra (‘ Butter Chicken in Ludhiana ’), Vikram Chandra (‘ Love and Longing in Bombay ’), Arundhati Roy (‘ The God of Small Things ’), Kiran Desai (‘ Strange Happenings in the Guava Orchard ’), Sudhir Kakar (‘ The Ascetic of Desire ’), Jhumpa Lahiri (‘ Interpreter of Maladies ’) are others.

The mid-20th century saw the emergence of poets such as Nissim Ezekiel (‘ The Unfurnished Man ’), P.Lal, A.K.Ramanujan (‘ The Striders ’, ‘ Relations ’, ‘ Second Sight ’), Dom Moraes (‘ A Beginning ’), Keki Daruwalla, Geive Patel, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawala, Kamala Das, Arun Kolatkar and R. Parthasarathy, who were heavily influenced by literary movements taking place in the West such as Symbolism, Surrealism, Existentialism, Absurdism and Confessional Poetry. These authors used Indian phrases alongside English words and tried to reflect a blend of the Indian and Western cultures.

Related Links on Literature  :

• Assamese Literature
• Bengali Literature
• Gujarati Literature
• Hindi Literature
• Kannada Literature
• Kashmiri Literature
• Malayalam Literature
• Manipuri Literature
• Marathi Literature
• Oriya Literature
• Punjabi Literature
• Sanskrit Literature
• Sindhi Literature
• Tamil Literature
• Telugu Literature
• Urdu Literature

Top Indian English Writers of the Modern Era

By priyansu

Some writers don’t just write stories for mere entertainment but to intrigue and intimidate our minds and thought process. They have the power to showcase reality or fiction with a beautiful sheen that often leaves our skeptical minds grasping for more. Here are a few top English writers who are Pioneers of contemporary Indian literature.

1. R. K. Narayan

There is hardly any Indian who has not grown up reading Malgudi Days and Swami and Friends. He is one of the first Indian novelists whose work gathered global audience’s attention which changed the literary line in India.

2. Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie’s contribution to English literature remains unparallel. The author is very well known for his book “Midnight’s Children” that won him the Booker-Prize.

3. Jhumpa Lahiri

One of the famous contemporary writers, Jhumpa Lahiri has won many awards throughout her career. Her first short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies won her Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her other famous works are “The Namesake”, “The Lowland”, “Unaccustomed Earth” etc.

4. Arundhati Roy

Arundhati’s first novel “The God of Small Things” (1997) won her the Booker prize and became bestselling book. She is famous for her strong political opinions. She is one of the most followed contemporary Indian writers.

Cover Image Credits : Twitter

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An Introduction To Contemporary Indian Literature In 10 Writers

India, with 22 officially recognized languages and a history of over 3,000 years in written literature, has one of the most complex literary histories in the world. To help you navigate this overwhelming literary culture, we have rounded up a list of the 10 best writers from modern India whose work has defined Indian-English literature.

Mulk raj anand.

Born in 1905, Mulk Raj Anand along with other writers of his time including R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao, are considered to be the pioneers of Indian-English fiction. Angered by an India where the caste system was still rigidly prevalent, he based most of his work on the lives of people in the so-called lower castes. His first major work, Untouchable (1935), is based on a single day in the life of a toilet-cleaner who has an encounter with a member of a higher caste. His other major works, including Across the Black Waters (1939), Coolie (1936), and The Big Heart (1945), are all critically acclaimed and central to the history of Indian literature.

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R.K. Narayan

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Salman Rushdie

This award-winning writer is most known for his works, the Booker Prize-winning Midnight’s Children (1981), and the controversial The Satanic Verses (1988).However, with 12 published novels and several works of non-fiction, this acclaimed writer is an important, defining figure in the South Asian literary world.

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Anita Desai

Having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on three occasions, Anita Desai is a well known and celebrated figure in the Indian literary world. Her most famous works are post-partition novel Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) which was adapted into an award winning film in 1993, and The Village by the Sea (1982) for which she won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

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Agha Shahid Ali

Author of A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987), The Half-Inch Himalayas (1987), A Nostalgist’s Map of America (1991), The Country Without a Post Office (1997), Agha Shahid Ali is among the premiere English language poets born in 20th century India. The Kashmiri poet who moved to the United States later in his life is credited with having introduced The Ghazal form in American poetry.

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Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things (1997), Arundhati Roy‘s debut novel, didn’t just win the Booker Prize, but also became the biggest selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Roy, known for her strong political stances and commentary, is one of the most followed writers in contemporary India today. Her work also includes several collections of essays including War Talk (2003) and Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014).

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Khushwant Singh

This famous Indian writer, journalist, lawyer and politician has penned what is one of the most essential reads in 20th century Indian literature – Train to Pakistan (1956). This historical novel recalls the partition of India in August 1947, with a focus on its human toll unlike few other accounts have managed. Among other well known and critically acclaimed books penned by Singh are I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959), Truth, Love and a Little Malice (2002), Delhi: A Novel (1990) and The Company of Women (1999).

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Vikram Seth

This Kolkata-born acclaimed novelist and poet has authored several books including the renowned A Suitable Boy (1993). At 1,349 pages and 591,552 words, this book is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language. His collections of poems include The Humble Administrator’s Garden (1985), Beastly Tales (1991) and Mappings (1980).

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Amitav Ghosh

Among the most well-regarded authors in contemporary Indian literature, Ghosh has published various acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. His novels include The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and Sea of Poppies (2008). He returned to non-fiction after about 20 years with his latest, much-anticipated work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) .

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Aravind Adiga

Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger (2008) won the Man Booker Prize, making him the second-youngest and fourth debut writer to win the prize. The book is among premiere works of fiction commenting on contemporary India, and its positive reception around the world has made it one of the most defining pieces in 21st century Indian literature. His other works include a collection of short stories Between the Assassinations (2008), as well as novels Last Man in Tower (2011) and Selection Day (2016).

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A Distinct Medium: How English Became a South Asian Literary Language

Liesl schwabe on the vision and legacy of an independent press in kolkata, india.

In 1958, the young Indian poet Purushottama (P.) Lal was living in Calcutta, writing in English, and looking for a publisher. Unable to find one, he gathered a small group of college friends who were also convinced that English was a legitimate Indian language for creative writing, including Anita Desai, and started an independent press, known still as Writers Workshop. During what became their legendary Sunday morning adda —a Bengali word often translated as a “chat,” but that actually invokes a much more spirited and sustained way of life—Lal, Desai, and others swapped feedback, wrote prefaces for what became one another’s first books, and adopted a “constitution,” outlining their mission to “define” and “sustain” the role of Indian writing in English.

That Sunday morning adda continued every week for forty years. The press, which now almost exclusively focuses on poetry, is currently in its sixth decade, having published more than 2,500 titles, including early work by luminaries such as Vikram Seth, Agha Shahid Ali, Asif Currimbhoy, Meena Alexander, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, among others who would become globally celebrated. At the same time, Writers Workshop has been equally visionary in their support of authors who are not only writers, such as with the powerfully tender 2013 poetry collection Own Me, Srinagar , by the Odishan police officer Basant Rath, who was posted to Kashmir.

Across the subcontinent, the linguistic landscape has always been—and remains—richly complex. For P. Lal himself, a Punjabi living in Calcutta and married to a Bengali, English was the only common language. For a country with twenty-two constitutionally recognized national languages, including English, at least 100 other “major” languages, and thousands of dialects, the question of which language belongs to whom—or vice-versa—has never had clear or consistent answers.

In the late 1950s, India was also a newly independent country, and many saw the use of English, in any form, as a betrayal to the authenticity of one’s mother tongue and motherland, especially in Calcutta, which had been the heart of anti-colonial fervor for centuries. As a result, the early years of Writers Workshop were plagued by what Ananda Lal, P. Lal’s son, recently described as “vitriolic attacks.” Chief among those was by Bengali writer and academic Buddhadeva  Bose , who denounced the claim that English was ever an Indian language. Although Bose recognized the historic value of Indian-English verse, he saw its merit as a relic of the 19th century. As for the future of Indian poetry in English, Bose deemed it a “blind alley, lined with curio shops, leading nowhere.”

Such sentiment was not only an academic argument, but palpable in the atmosphere, and the founding members of Writers Workshop “felt quite isolated in their own country,” as Ananda put it, under the ceiling fan and over fresh Sandesh, in a magnificent room with red walls, high ceilings, and rows and rows of bookcases at his family home in South Kolkata, which has also served as the Writers Workshop office since both the house was built and the press formally founded in 1959. Born in 1955, Ananda grew up alongside Writers Workshop, sitting in on the Sunday morning adda and observing the group’s struggles as well as their resilience. “They carried on regardless,” he said, “because English is an Indian language.”

Rather than be deterred, P. Lal took Bose’s public condemnation, which appeared in a 1963 encyclopedia of English and American Poetry, edited by Donald Hall, and repurposed Bose’s language and logic as a questionnaire, which he then sent, by post, to dozens of Indian poets: “Mr. Bose suggests that Indian writing in English was ‘the outcome of an anglomania which seized some upper-class Indians in the early years of British rule,’” P. Lal established before asking his writers point blank, “What are the circumstances that led to your using the English Language?” There were seven questions in total, including whether the writers considered English an Indian language, and the varied replies, alongside accompanying poems, became the 1969 Writers Workshop classic Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology and a Credo , edited by P. Lal.

The nuance and intimacy of the responses endure as poignantly now as they did sixty years ago. “We spoke a Punjabi dialect,” journalist and poet O.P. Bhagat wrote of his upbringing in what became a small town in Pakistan. Though, he said, “it was not written—unless one deliberately used the Persian or Devanagari script.” At his school, Bhagat explained, the boys were taught Urdu and the girls Hindi, further complicating the already multifaceted variables of linguistic heritage. Bhagat also agreed with Bose that English was not an Indian language. “But” he reasoned, “it has, through historical circumstances, become the cultural and literary language to many Indians.”

In his response to the questionnaire, South Indian writer M.P. Bhaskaran, whose poetry collection The Dancer and the Ring was published by Writers Workshop in 1962, articulates a perspective that still resonates with many South Indians today, “The Hindi imperialists fear that English, unless it is rooted out, may not allow Hindi to dominate India.”

“Language,” Kamala Das said of her writing in English, “does not observe the rigid rules of narrow patriotism. It serves anybody who chooses to serve it.” Beyond this explicit rejection of Bose’s argument, Das’ poetry also directly engages with questions of the vernacular, notably in ways that read as inextricable from her feminism, such as in the final line of her poem, “An Introduction:” I too call myself I .

P. Lal died in 2010, Ananda took over the press, which has remained at once steadfast and innovative in upholding its original mission. “It’s not a different medium,” Ananda said of Indian writing in English, “but it is a distinct medium,” the literary and creative evolution of which dates back more than 200 years. “Longer,” he asserted, “than the history of modern literature in several Indian languages.”

According to Ananda, Shankar Mokashi Punekar , whose Kannada-language novel Avadeshwari won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1988, began integrating “Indian words” into his English language poetry in the late 1960s. This was remarkable at the time, he emphasized, because “the English then,” what his father and other poets were using, was “the Queen’s English.” Prior to that, the “great trinity” of Indian novelists from the 1930s—Mulk Raj Anand, a Punjabi, and R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao, both South Indians—also all used regional idiomatic expressions in their English. But even before that, as Lal used to argue in his classes at Jadavpur University, where he taught for many years, early 19 th century Bengali writers, including the radical prodigy Henry Derozio and Toru Dutt, a remarkable woman writer and translator, who was the first Indian to publish a novel in French, were among the original pioneers of creative writing in English. And even they came a generation after Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who, in the 1790s, mastered many languages, including Sanskrit and Persian, but understood that English, for better or worse, would reach the widest audience.

Far more recently, writers including Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie have strengthened the entire world’s admiration of English as an Indian language—precisely for the acutely Indian contexts which they’ve illuminated. As Anupama Mohan, Associate Professor of English at IIT Jodhpur, whose 2008 poetry collection was published by Writers Workshop, described, “If colonialism took English from provincial to global, then these writers took English from global to local.”

Since its inception, Writers Workshop has also been expanding who or what constitutes an “Indian voice” by ensuring broad geographic diversity. While this has always included representation of South Indian writers, over the last several decades, Writers Workshop has consistently published writers from the Northeast, too. East of Bangladesh and West of Myanmar, India’s North East refers to eight states that are culturally, geographically, and linguistically different from much of the rest of the subcontinent. Marginalized since British rule with dispossession exacerbated by Partition, the Northeast remains especially vulnerable under the current Hindu Nationalist government, which has threatened the citizenship , land rights, and the religious identity of people throughout the Northeast, including Christians, Muslims, and Adivasis.

This year, Writers Workshop re-released the 2004 collection River Poems by Arunachal Pradesh-based poet, journalist, and Sahitya Akademi-award winning novelist Mamang Dai. Temsula Ao , who died in 2022, was born in present-day Assam in 1945 and became a celebrated voice of the Naga people. Her 1988 collection Songs That Tell was one of the first two books of poetry by Northeastern writers that Writers Workshop published. Her poem “My Hills” invokes a past and a present in which brutality has become the new familiar: I no longer know my hills, / The birdsong is gone, / Replaced by staccato / Of sophisticated weaponry.

Writers Workshop books have come to reflect an India in which English is no longer synonymous with an urban upbringing. “Up until the 1980s,” Ananda noted, “all our writers were based in metropolitan areas or had gone abroad.” That’s no longer the case, he underscored, and the manuscripts he now receives—and publishes—reflect this shift. “I’m getting more unheard voices from elsewhere.”

Despite these advances, the linguistic terrain remains fraught. Writing for The New York Times in 2015, Aatish Taseer notoriously proclaimed that English “ ruined ” Indian literature and that English continues to “re-enact the colonial relationship.” Beyond the provocative title, however, the piece soberly crystallizes the extent to which English in India registers as “class” as much as, if not more than, a language; the implications of status are undeniable given that an English medium education is seen as necessary to a financially viable future. And yet, current efforts by the ruling Hindu nationalists to promote Hindi and to shun English also threaten to silence, if not erase, other voices and experiences all together.

For Goa-based poet Gauri Gharpure , who has published two collections with Writers Workshop, the focus on English can feel like a distraction. “I wish it were seen with a more generic lens,” she said, rather than something to condemn or to glamorize. Ultimately, Gharpure considers English the means by which “different narratives of our culture, ancient as well as current, are portrayed in varied ways.” To this end, she’d also like to see far more work in translation. “That would be something worth glorifying,” she said.

Piercing through these infinite, thorny questions of history, nationalism, and the collective impact of individual expression are the gorgeous books themselves, each one still stitched and pressed in handloom sari cloth the color of jewels. Although Tulamiah Mohiuddin Khan , who began binding Writers Workshop books by hand in the early 1960s, passed away several decades ago, his youngest son continues the work today. The loving attentiveness to the beauty and craft of each book remains emblematic of the loving attentiveness given to the precision of each writer’s words—in the perfect, imperfect language of English that, like the fabric on the books, stretches into its own form, bright and durable and human.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , who was born and raised in Calcutta, was living in the U.S. when P. Lal published her first book in 1987, a poetry collection entitled Dark Like the River . “Publishing in English was crucial for me,” Divakaruni recently explained over email. “I am fluent in daily-use Bangla and read it at a high level, but English is the language I studied in school, and the only language in which I was capable of writing anything literary or complex. Writers Workshop made that possible,” she emphasized, which she believes also deepened her bond with her Indian readers. “Prof. Lal had a prophetic vision. He saw English in India, as used by Indian writers, as a unique entity…Now, decades later, we (and the world!) are seeing the truth of this.”

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Arun Joshi | Kanak Yadav

Home » Arun Joshi | Kanak Yadav

MLA: Yadav, Kanak. “Arun Joshi.” Indian Writing In English Online , 30 Oct 2023, indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/arunjoshi_kanakyadav/ .

Chicago: Yadav, Kanak. “Arun Joshi” Indian Writing In English Online. October 30, 2023. indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/arunjoshi_kanakyadav/ .

Introduction: The Writer and Indian English Canon

Arun Joshi (1939-1993) was born in an academic environment as his father, the botanist A. C. Joshi served as the vice-chancellor of two leading Indian universities, namely, Punjab and Banaras Hindu University (Randhawa). Joshi was himself academically oriented holding a Master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.  After completing his education, he returned to India and joined the Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, a Delhi-based NGO and served as its Executive Director until his death on April 19, 1993 ( Indian Journal of Industrial Relations ).

Despite having a prolific writing career publishing five novels and a collection of short stories, Arun Joshi has remained an elusive figure in the canon of Indian fiction in English. Alongside his career as the Head of the research institute and as a journal editor, Joshi successfully managed another career as a writer. His skillful prose brings out the thematic complexity of his fiction which explores issues like inequalities in the Indian social structure, moral decadence, the futility of materialistic pursuits, the conflict between individual desire and societal repression, the crisis of enlightenment, and how a foreboding sense of alienation preoccupies the human subject. Joshi was also a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award in 1982 for his novel The Last Labyrinth (1981). Nevertheless, he continues to be undervalued, both in the literary marketplace and in academic circles despite his significant contribution to Indian Writing in English, which leads Pavan Kumar Malreddy to question: “How do we explain this glaring discrepancy between the prolific output on Joshi’s literary oeuvre and his almost neglected place in the pantheon of the postcolonial canon?” (3-4).

One possible reason for the obscurity of Arun Joshi’s fiction could be its unavailability. His works remained “out of print” (Sudarshan 2013) until a decade ago when his Delhi-based publisher, Orient Paperbacks, republished some of his works under their venture called, “Library of South Asian Literature.” Joshi’s fictional world, which was otherwise confined to the dusty shelves of old Indian libraries, has now been rediscovered by an entirely new generation and a global audience with the reprinting and availability of e-copies. Joshi’s early death at the age of 54 and his books not being marketed outside the subcontinent even when international publishers had entered the Indian literary market (Sudarshan 2013) are some of the contributing factors for the cultural amnesia that he has suffered.

The struggle to situate Arun Joshi within the corpus of Indian English Literature is a real one since his subject-matter is unlike any of his peers. According to Madhusudan Prasad, Joshi’s fiction is “singularized by certain existentialist problems and the resultant anguish, agony, psychic quest, and the like” (103). His fiction evidently draws influence from twentieth-century Western philosophers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre who question the existence of God and the purpose of human existence. Generally labeled as “existentialists,” a term which many writers so categorised have invariably rejected, their literature demonstrates the individual trapped in a crisis of identity as seen in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1916), breakdown of language and selfhood in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (1952), and the absence of God and the absurdity of life in Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Stranger (1942). The philosophical issues explored in Arun Joshi’s fiction bear close resemblance to existentialist philosophy to the extent that critics have interpreted Joshi’s first novel The Foreigner (1968) as inspired by Albert Camus’s 1942 novel The Stranger (Prasad 104). Similarly, O. P. Mathur interprets the protagonist of The Foreigner (1968), Sindi Oberoi, as a “Sartrean protagonist” who embodies the journey from alienation and detachment to “right and useful action” (425). The influence of Western philosophy on Joshi’s fiction has also contributed to creating a disconnect between him and the Indian English canon.

Arun Joshi’s literary vision has made it difficult to label him a quintessentially “Indian” writer particularly since, in the early years, the formation of the Indian English canon was mainly developed upon the idea of how it was lending a voice to the postcolonial nation state. As such, Joshi is either canonised as a divergent voice in the various histories and anthologies of Indian Writing in English, or else his “Indian sensibility” is overdetermined to fit him neatly in the field. For instance Meenakshi Mukherjee interprets Joshi’s first novel The Foreigner (1968) within the framework of the “East-West” (207) cultural encounter and reads its sense of alienation through the lens of cultural difference and an individual’s sense of conflict. M.K. Naik’s A History of Indian English Literature (1982) offers a comprehensive critical account of Joshi’s novels and identifies him as one of the “most striking” (270) voices of the seventies. In Naik’s words, “Joshi is a novelist seriously interested in existential dilemmas and equally acutely aware of both the problems of post-Independence Indian society and the implications of the East-West encounter” (292). Naik clubs the psychological and intellectual struggles of Joshi’s flawed protagonists into an “East vs West” debate in order to affirm their postcolonial ethos. Joshi’s fiction, however, refuses convenient labels: neither could it be categorised as “existentialist” literature alone, which is imitative of western philosophy, nor could its subject be reduced to a cultural clash between eastern “tradition” and western “modernity.” If there is anything substantial that one can conclude from Joshi’s representation of the conflict between the ‘modern’ and the ‘traditional’ worlds, the individual and the society, the body and the mind, and desire and its repression, it is that he does not perceive these categories as antithetical. Instead, he intertwines these seemingly opposing worldviews to reflect upon metaphysical questions pertaining to life and its meaning.

The Politics of Joshi’s Fiction

Arun Joshi’s writing has focused on the individual psyche, its struggles and the pretentious world of the Indian elites without manifestly engaging with larger events like the Indian independence and the social ills plaguing the postcolonial nation state, concerns which have been crucial in defining and shaping the canon of Indian Writing in English. Furthermore, because of Joshi’s metaphysical inquiries into life’s meaning, subjecthood, and the alienating effects of modernity, the socio-political aspects of his narrative also tend to get overlooked in the overarching frame of the individual’s quest for meaning. For instance, the crisis of selfhood plaguing Joshi’s fatalistic protagonists, and the attempts to resolve it, cannot be separated from their male privilege and their upper-class, upper-caste background. His fiction often centers around a privileged male subject who feels alienated despite having all the comforts. However, the novels do not simply serve as  mouthpieces to these flawed protagonists but remain critical of their worldview and ideologies. As Joshi focusses on the psychological instead of the manifestly political, he remains critical of upper-class values and culture.

In The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), tribal culture exists as an antithesis to the modern society and is romanticised in order to strike a contrast with the culture of big Indian cities. Makarand Paranjape draws a parallel between Joshi’s novel and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) to comment on how the former is a “Conradesque journey into the heart of the Indian darkness” (1052). For instance, Billy’s position within the tribal group can be compared to Kurtz’s relationship with the African natives especially in terms of his God-like status among the tribes. However, the comparison also ends there as Billy is completely integrated into the tribal culture without showing any moral superiority for his own civilisational values. The novel, therefore, privileges indigenous knowledge but only to contrast and critique the world inhabited by the urban  elite.

The connection between the protagonist’s quest for identity and his own caste and class privilege is also present in The Last Labyrinth (1981). Som Bhaskar’s existentialist dilemma is tied to his caste identity as a Brahmin millionaire. The question that Anuradha poses to Som Bhaskar towards the beginning of the novel, “What is a Bhaskar doing in business?” (Joshi, The Last Labyrinth 11) implicitly links his spiritual crisis with the quest for transcendence that is associated with his identity as a Brahmin man. Som Bhaskar is a millionaire who despite his successful business and relationships suffers from an inexplicable cry, “I want. I want.” (Joshi The Last Labyrinth 9). This unquenchable desire not only takes him to Banaras but also to a Krishna temple in the mountains that leads him to the spiritual awakening of how Anuradha miraculously saved his life when the doctors had given up faith. The manner in which the novel upholds the unknown, mysterious elements of life makes it difficult to separate Bhaskar’s spiritual crisis with his Brahmin identity.

Joshi’s existentialist fiction, therefore, appears as a world occupied by upper-class/upper-caste men who are oblivious to their caste and cultural privilege, which seems to be a major limitation in his writings. However, it is their relinquishment of material comfort and privileges that leads to meaningful insights over individual freedom, morality, the crisis of selfhood, and societal expectations. While this is overtly manifested in The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) as Billy abandons Delhi to search for greater truths in the expanse of the forests, The Last Labyrinth too explores the idea of renouncing metropolitan life to find comfort in the old world order epitomised by the Lal Haveli in Banaras. Even The Apprentice (1974) – which follows a different trajectory since the protagonist, Ratan Rathor, belongs to a humble background – explores the idea of repentance for one’s wrongdoings by indulging in good deeds. Ratan Rathor’s dramatic monologue which narrates his rags-to-riches story comes to an end with his confession of becoming the almighty’s “apprentice” by visiting the temple daily to “wipe the shoes of the congregation” (Joshi, The Apprentice Chap. 12). Given the unreliability of Rathor’s story, it is doubtful if he has truly mended his ways after clearing the defective order which cost him the life of his close friend, the Brigadier. However, The Apprentice (1974) also manages to tease the other possibility of Rathor seeking redemption by rising above his greed for material comforts. Hence, Arun Joshi’s anti-heroes question and critique the world of privileges, its corrupt value system, and the social divide it perpetuates.

The City and the River (1990) is distinctive when compared with Joshi’s other works which are thematically centered around an alienated subject. This allegorical tale, recounted by the Great Yogeshwara to his disciple, the Nameless One, shows the power struggle between politicians and citizens, law enforcers and law abiders, and the haves and the have-nots respectively. The tussle between the Grandmaster and the scheming Astrologer on one side and the underprivileged like “the mud people” and “the boatmen” on the other, is symbolic of class struggle as the Grandmaster dictates and commands without any consideration for the needs of the masses. However, this is not a simplistic tale of conflict between the ruling class and the working class, as Nirmala Menon tellingly reminds us how the novel critiques “both social institutions and its subjects” (74). She argues that the novel allegorically refers to the Indian Emergency (1975-1977) whether it is through the usage of the phrase “‘The Era of Ultimate Greatness’” or the “mass arrests” that are carried out in the text (Menon 74). Furthermore, the policy of “one child to a mother or two to a home” enforced by the Grandmaster suggests the two-child policy and mass sterilisation that was promoted during the Emergency (Joshi, The City Chap. 1). The City and the River (1990) is a political text which connects politics to philosophical enquiry. Unlike Joshi’s other novels which are centered around the psychology of the individual, The City and the River (1990) focusses on the “politics of collective” (Menon 65).

Beyond Dualisms

As argued previously, Arun Joshi’s fiction cannot be interpreted solely in terms of binaries like “East vs West,” “tradition vs modernity,” and “individual vs society,” as his novels challenge such dualisms to show their interconnections. For instance, Joshi’s first novel, The Foreigner (1968), demonstrates the lonely world occupied by the anti-hero, Sindi Oberoi, who despite his multiracial background feels like a “foreigner” in whichever country he goes to. According to Madhusudan Prasad, the novel “relates the pathetic story of its narrator, Sindi Oberoi, who reflects helplessly on his meaningless past and is apprehensive of his equally meaningless future” (104). Born to an interracial couple, an English mother and an Indian father, Sindi lost his parents at an early age and was brought up by his “uncle in Kenya” (Joshi, The Foreigner Chap. 2). His education was also “global” as he studied in East Africa, London, and the United States (Joshi, The Foreigner Chap. 3). Sindi’s character embodies what Homi K. Bhabha has termed “cultural hybridity” (6). However, instead of accepting and acknowledging his multicultural background, he fails to belong to either Kenya, America, or to his Indian origins. Sindi’s “in-between” identity and his life’s philosophy of detachment alienate him from the world-at-large. (Bhabha 2).

In not belonging completely to any particular country or race, Sindi Oberoi is not uprooted and detached as he would like to convince himself, but his existence lies between cultures and spaces such that he could belong anywhere in the world: a message which he learns only by the end of the novel when he has already lost Babu Rao Khemka and June Blyth because of his philosophy to “live without desire and attachment” (Joshi, The Foreigner Chap. 11). Sindi’s absolute belief in non-commitment and inaction was a ruse for self-preservation and it is only by the end of the novel that he realises this truth when an office employee, Muthu, shares his own understanding of detachment: “Sometimes detachment lies in actually getting involved” (Joshi, The Foreigner Chap. 18). Seen in this context, Sindi’s decision to stay back and manage Mr. Khemka’s business for the sake of the employees is intellectually enlightening for him as he arrives at a pluralistic sense of modernity which values action. After losing Babu Rao Khemka and June Blyth, Sindi realises that “detachment consisted of right action and not escape from it” (Joshi, The Foreigner Chap. 15). His modernist angst, which was founded upon loneliness and a crisis of faith, finds a temporary resolution towards the novel’s end as he recognises an alternative worldview where attachment and detachment are not mutually exclusive.

Similarly, interpreting The Foreigner (1968) in terms of the conflict of “East vs West” is far too simplistic, as the novel does not privilege one set of cultural values over the other. The two characters who symbolise the eastern and western civilisations – Babu Rao Khemka and June Blyth respectively – struggle to survive because of their absolute values, not to mention Sindi’s “withdrawing” attitude (Prasad 104). In the character of Sindi Oberoi, the novel brings together “eastern” and “western” values to uphold a pluralistic culture. As Sindi, the rootless, alienated protagonist starts running Mr. Khemka’s business, the novel challenges his bad faith to uphold a vision of modernity that does not demand a transcendence from the material world but a willful engagement with it.

Joshi’s second novel The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) also disputes the purpose of existence, enlightenment, and the apparent progress of human civilisation by portraying the eccentric life of Billy Biswas. Billy Biswas was an Indian anthropologist trained in the United States and working with Delhi University, who withdraws from the elite circles of his Delhi household to settle among a tribal group, the “ bhils of the Satpura Hills” (Joshi, The Strange Case 7). The novel critiques the normative modernity of English-speaking urban elites and their demand for social conformity as it tragically recounts the fate of Billy Biswas who is hunted down and eventually killed when his family attempts to reclaim him from his tribal life.

Recounted through the perception of the second-person narrator, Romi Sahai, a civil servant who befriended Billy in New York, the novel reflects on the social rebellion of Billy Biswas against the upper-class Indian society and its understanding of development, culture, and modernity. By contrasting the enriching lives led by the tribal groups against the materialistic, civilised world of metropolitan spaces, Joshi explores the divide between nature and culture, rural and urban spaces, indigeneity and modernity, and theory and praxis. Billy’s decision to assimilate himself within the local tribe and abandon his family serves as a comment not only on his passion for the unknown mysteries of life but also on his willingness to bridge the intellectual gap by privileging indigenous knowledge structures which the civilised world may frown upon.

Billy Biswas could be considered a misfit in the society as he recklessly leaves behind his entire family by disappearing into the woods. However, his unreasonable, self-serving quest for meaning that drives him to withdraw from civilisation is also a greater search for “one’s true self” (Mathur 426). In his first encounter with the tribes and their festivities, Billy Biswas feels a connection and a calling to be his “primitive self” (Joshi, The Strange Case 101):

He stood on a rock and saw in the night sky a reality that blinded him with its elemental ferocity. It was as though his life had been reduced to those elements with which we all begin when we are born. (Joshi The Strange Case 102).

This meeting with the tribe awakens something primordial in Billy since the tribe stood in stark contrast to the sophisticated world from which he had arrived. In order to contrast the world of the city as egotistical and predetermined by social pretensions and material worth, Arun Joshi romanticises tribal life through the character of Billy, by privileging their legends and myths, without dealing with them critically. By contrasting the culture of the city with tribal life, the novel critiques the superficiality of the modern Indian society. In this process it touches upon elements that remain questionable from a representative point of view, such as Billy’s god-like stature among the tribes and the overt sexualisation of Bilasia who is meant to symbolize feminine energy. The novel uses such problematic elements to provide answers to philosophical questions that had haunted Billy as an academic and which he only understood once he acquired alternative knowledge by living with the tribes. The novel synthesises western enlightenment and indigenous knowledge structures, reason and myths in the character of Billy whose pursuit of anthropology as a field of study led him to deeper inquiries which he could only comprehend after annihilating his “modern,” urban self. Although the novel’s engagement with tribal culture stems from its desire to interrogate urban Indian culture, it, nevertheless, ends up broadening the meaning of culture and modernity by privileging cultural differences that may otherwise be conveniently disregarded as primitive.

The Last Labyrinth (1981) explores a married business tycoon, Som Bhaskar’s obsession with a woman named Anuradha through whom he wants to conquer his unquenchable thirst for wanting more. By overlapping the desire for material possession (Aftab’s shares) with the immaterial like spiritual fulfillment, sexual bliss, love and transcendence, Joshi synthesises opposing elements to comment on the inherent contradictions in human desire. The novel begins with Som Bhaskar’s desire to capture Aftab’s business which he eventually obtains but without contentment, and ends with an unsatisfied Som, who is scared and on the verge of self-harm, as Anuradha has disappeared from his life. The novel concludes in an open-ended manner, as it is unclear whether Anuradha has willingly gone missing or has been subject to violence within the mysterious folds of the labyrinthine Haveli. In the Som-Anuradha relationship, social conventions are flouted to establish a connection between the known and the unknown, the spiritual and the sexual, and the body and the mind respectively. For example, Som Bhaskar’s physical fixation with Anuradha attains a mystical dimension when he gains the knowledge that Anuradha saved him from dying because of their “spiritual” connection. Similarly, in Anuradha’s disappearance, the novel seems to point to the unknown, mysterious elements of human desire which can never be understood fully.

From critiquing the upper-class of the Indian society to the quest for meaning in an absurd world, Joshi’s anti-heroes embody the modern dilemma to both belong and transcend the world. Whether it is through material possessions, sexual bliss, intellectual pursuits, detachment, or even religious devotion, his nonconformist characters are not just meant to demonstrate the wrongs of the society. Instead, they are intended to challenge the fundamental premise of human civilisation. From Billy Biswas abandoning the civilised spaces of Delhi to live amidst tribal groups to Sindi Oberoi’s theory of detachment in The Foreigner (1968), to Som Bhaskar’s sexual and spiritual obsession with Anuradha and the maze-like structure of Lal Haveli in Banaras, which preserves an older world, in The Last Labyrinth (1981), Joshi’s preoccupation lies with metaphysical enquiries which he addresses by exploring the limits of human reason, faith, morality, desire, and sexuality. Undoubtedly, Joshi’s philosophical engagement is not apolitical since most of his protagonists come from privileged backgrounds, except for Ratan Rathor in The Apprentice (1974) who represents the common man’s struggles to “arrive” in the city. Nevertheless, Joshi remains vehemently critical of the social class he represents. It can be argued that Romi Sahai, the narrator in The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) serves as the author’s mouthpiece when he says how “life’s meaning lies not in the glossy surfaces of our pretensions, but in those dark mossy labyrinths of the soul that languish forever […]” (8). Joshi’s fiction explores the psychological realms of this world which otherwise lie buried within the human subject.

Bibliography:

Joshi, Arun. The Apprentice . Orient Paperbacks, 1974.

—. The City and the River . Orient Paperbacks, 1990.

—. The Foreigner . Orient Paperbacks, 1968.

—. The Last Labyrinth . Orient Paperbacks, 1981.

—. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas . Orient Paperbacks, 1971.

Works Cited:

“Arun Joshi.”  Indian Journal of Industrial Relations , vol. 28, no. 4, 1993.  JSTOR , http://www.jstor.org/stable/27767266 . Accessed 12 July 2023.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture . Routledge, 1994.

Malreddy, Pavan Kumar. “Arun Joshi: Avant-Garde, Existentialism and the West.”  Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik , vol. 62, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3-12.  https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2014-0002 .

Mathur, OP. “Survival and Affirmation in Arun Joshi’s Novels.” World Literature Today , vol.63, no. 3, 1989, pp. 425-428. JSTOR , https://doi.org/10.2307/40145317 . Accessed 13 July 2023.

Menon, Nirmala. “Peripheral Identities and Hybridity in Arun Joshi’s  The City and the River ”  Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik , vol. 62, no. 1, 2014, pp. 63-6. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2014-0007 .

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English . Heinemann, 1971.

Naik, MK. A History of Indian English Literature . Sahitya Akademi, 1982.

Paranjape, Makarand. “Post-Independence Indian English Literature: Towards a New Literary History.”  Economic and Political Weekly , vol. 33, no. 18, 1998, pp. 1049–56.  JSTOR , http://www.jstor.org/stable/4406729 . Accessed 15 July 2023.

Prasad, Madhusudan. “Arun Joshi: The Novelist.” Indian Literature , vol. 24, no.4, 1981, pp. 103-114. JSTOR , http://www.jstor.org/stable/23330214 . Accessed 13 July 2023.

Randhawa MS. “Amar Chand Joshi (1908-1971).” Indian National Science Academy ,  https://www.insaindia.res.in/BM/BM15_9214.pdf .

Sudarshan, Aditya. “The strange case of Arun Joshi.” The Hindu , March 2, 2013,  https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-authors/the-strange-case-of-arun-joshi/article4465223.ece .

Kanak Yadav

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