Books like India's Bandit Queen by Mala Sen

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.

In Mumbai’s slums, families chase better lives as India’s prosperity rises, revealing the human side of global inequality.

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.

Gandhi's autobiography is a profound exploration of his non-violent resistance to racism and colonialism, as well as his efforts to seek purity and truth through simple living and spiritual devotion.

A firsthand account of Indian independence, detailing the last days of British rule, the partition, and Gandhi’s legacy, as narrated by historian Dominique Lapierre.

political history

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.

An Indian judge in a Himalayan estate grapples with retirement and family secrets when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives, sparking personal discovery amid the echoes of colonial history.

David Carr, a New York Times reporter and columnist, chronicles his own descent into cocaine addiction, weaving personal memoir with over 50 videotaped interviews to reveal a harrowing past he had long denied.

Autobiography of an economist and members of a down-trodden caste from Maharashtra.

A rare, exotic portrait of the matriarchs of a brilliant Indian familyRanging from the final days of the Raj and the British Empire to the present, Lucy Moore vividly re-creates a splendid lost world and describes India's national growing pains through the sumptuous, audacious lives of four ravishing, influential women of the same family—Sunity Devi, friend to Queen Victoria; Chimnabai, fierce nationalist; Indira, her flamboyant daughter; and Ayesha, her equally fashionable daughter—who fought tirelessly and with incomparable grace to turn an ancient tradition of noblesse oblige into a progressive democracy. BACKCOVER: "Scintillating. Moore revels in every detail—from the elegance of the maharanis' attire, to the complexities of Indian family life and politics, to the trauma and heroism of breaking with tradition."—Booklist (starred review)"A fascinating picture of a vanished world."—Sarah Bradford, author of Lucrezia Borgia

A biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Rajmohan Gandhi, exploring the life and political legacy of the Indian national leader and statesman.