In the structure and dialogue of these wonderful novels, we get the sights and scents of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh - with their vivid characters, deep sensory description, and joie de vivre. We learn about the small villages, where dreams are born and small events achieve immense significance. The subject matter also includes traditional East Indian interests such as food, landscape and caste, while also addressing issues of globalization, family and culture, and the role of women.
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Description: Refusing to join her son and daughter-in-law in their new home in Australia, Pakistani woman Bilqis Ara Begum witnesses the rising insurgency in 1980s Kashmir and observes a forbidden relationship between her servant girl and a neighbor boy.
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Description: A historical and literary novel that revolves around characters originating in West and East Pakistan who love each other and marry, but their marriage is deeply affected by the violence that overtakes the country and the ultimate dismemberment of Pakistan.
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Description: As she plans a party for her son and daughter, Rehana Haque’s life will be transformed in a story of one family caught in the middle of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, as they face changes and decisions that will have a profound impact on their lives.
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Description: Trained in the classical idiom but teaching popular modern songs to wealthy clients whose lifestyle he covets, voice teacher Shyam Lal accepts sixteen-year-old Nirmalya as a student of Indian classical music.
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Description: Successful anesthesiologist Neel hopes to resist his family’s pleas that he marry a proper woman during a visit home to India, while jaded thirty-year-old teacher Leila anticipates her latest suitor without high hopes.
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Description: Traveling to India to scatter her late father’s ashes, a grieving Bijou abandons her life in Washington, D.C., to pursue the truth about why her parents severed their ties to their native culture, an effort during which she is drawn to the son of her father’s closest comrade.
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Description: Panchaali, wife of the five legendary Pandavas brothers, offers her own version of the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabharat, as she chronicles the story of her magical birth, the problems of dealing with five husbands who have been cheated out of their birthright, the trials she endures, her friendship with Krishna, and her attraction to her husband’s enemy.
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Description: Describes the love story between Babo, an Indian man, and Sian, a fair-skinned woman from Wales, who forged a life for themselves and their hybrid family in Madras, India.
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Description: The lives of two families living on the outskirts of Istanbul are changed by a massive earthquake that brings them together in a dangerous intimacy in which forbidden love blossoms between Irem, a Kurdish Muslim girl, and Dylan, a young American.
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Description: Presents a novel of life in modern India, chronicling the interwoven journey of an American marine biologist and a Delhi businessman who travel to the remote Sundarban islands.
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Description: Interweaving the stories of Kavita, Somer, and the child that binds both of their destinies, this novel explores the emotional terrain of motherhod, loss, identity, and love, as witnessed through the lives of two families.
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Description: After Darashikoh Shezad is fired from his job, his life enters a tailspin as he begins taking drugs, falls in love with his friend’s wife, and embarks on a career in crime.
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Description: Junior Officer Ali Shigri of the Pakistan Air Force, the son of Colonel Quli Shigri, who had been one of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq’s right-hand men prior to his suicide, struggles to unravel the secrets and motives that led to his father’s death.
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Description: After Sadika arranged marriage to her first cousin in America falls through, which ruins her reputation and her hopes on finding a suitable match, she decides to go to the United States on her own.
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Description: The story of two cousins and the ways that their lives unexpectedly intertwine. Set in rural villages and Bombay and Delhi, the novel is packed with telling details and anecdotes about life in contemporary India.
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Description: A portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life.
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Description: In nine stories imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, Lahiri charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. This short fiction collection blends elements of Indian traditions with the complexities of American culture.
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Description: Sold into sexual slavery as a young girl, fifteen-year-old Batuk spends her days in a cage on Mumbai’s child-prostitute district while recording thoughts and stories in a diary.
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Description: A portrait of India featuring four characters. Two are tailors who are forcibly sterilized, one is a student who emigrates, and the fourth is a widowed seamstress who decides to hang on. A tale of cruelty, political thuggery and despair by an Indian from Toronto.
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Description: In 1969, in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.
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Description: Zaki Shirazi, a young Pakistani in a household dominated by his mother and grandmother, is close to his female cousin, Samar Api, but while Samar’s reckless teenage behavior brings consequences for her, Zaki is free to explore the world, only later reflecting on the true meaning of happiness.
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Description: Years after her activist mother disappears and her mother’s lover, a renowned Pakistani poet, is killed by government thugs and , Aasmaani, an employee at Pakistan’s first independent television station, begins to receive a series of letters written in her mother’s private code.
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Description: Having lost their beloved only child to a sudden illness, Frank and Ellie Benton hope to rebuild their lives by accepting a job offer in India but find their new home compromised by Frank’s efforts to heal his grief through a friendship with a young boy.
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Description: Brings to life a profoundly exotic yet utterly recognizable family in the midst of social upheaval in a story that spans the lifetime of one woman in a Brahmin household from 1896 through 1962.
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Description: Driving his wife crazy after his retirement, Mr. Ali is persuaded to open a marriage bureau, and when his business becomes a success he decides to hire an assistant, Aruna, who, hiding a tragic past.