Books like Pinjar by by Amrita Pritam

The Kite Runner follows an unlikely friendship between a privileged boy and the son of his father’s servant amid Afghanistan’s turbulent history, exploring betrayal, redemption, and the father‑son bond.

The God of Small Things chronicles the upended childhood of fraternal twins in India, exploring love, caste, and the impact of small moments on fate.

Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize‑winning novel, intertwines India’s journey from colonial rule to independence with the personal saga of Saleem Sinai in a tale of historical myth and magical realism.

Balram Halwai rises from servant to entrepreneur, revealing the brutal path of ambition and survival in modern India.

A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's critically acclaimed second novel, set in India in the mid-1970s and focusing on four unlikely individuals who come together in a city apartment during a state of emergency.

Set during the 1947 partition, Khushwant Singh’s classic follows the village of Mano Majra as it faces the horrors of communal violence and follows a Sikh boy and Muslim girl whose love transcends the conflict.

A fugitive from an Australian maximum‑security prison finds himself in Bombay, where he learns Hindi, meets a smiling Hindu guide, and falls in love with a dangerous woman while discovering the heart of the city.

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces? On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes of tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned Paulette and a motley collection of others whose pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower have thrown together. All struggle to cope with their losses - and for some, unimaginable freedoms - in the alleys and crowded waterways of 19th century Canton.