Books like The serpent and the rope by Raja Rao

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.

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.

Two couples—wealthy LA liberals and a Mexican illegal pair—intersect in a humorous, culturally tense tale that explores marriage, immigration, and identity through multiple perspectives.

In Old Delhi, Anita Desai explores the fragile bonds of the Das family—sisters Bimla and Tara, brother Raja, and mentally challenged Baba—as they confront past grievances, forgiveness, and the struggle for familial harmony.

The Last Song of Dusk follows Anuradha Patwardhan and Dr. Vardhmaan as they navigate a marriage forged by fate, tragedy, and the pressures of love in a vibrant, shifting Indian backdrop.

In 1941, newlywed Nerys Watkins accompanies her husband to a missionary posting in the exotic lakeside city of Srinagar, where she is swept up in a liaison that completely changes her life, a transformation that is explored by a descendant generations later.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines weaves a contemplative domestic narrative set against the backdrop of India and Britain, exploring political and social boundaries through the lives of boys and their families.

"A rope rises up into the air. A boy climbs up the rope and when the boy gets to the top he vanishes into thin air," explains Lamont, winner of the Jeremy Dalziel prize in British History, about a tall tale that found its way into legend. The rope trick is one of the most successful hoaxes of all time, created by an amateur magician and printed in the Chicago Tribune in 1890. Despite a later admission that the story was false, it continued to spread in newspapers and journals throughout the world. Some claimed to have seen the trick performed on trips to India. Others added their own spin to the tale. Using the original legend as a starting point, Lamont, who has performed as a magician and psychic, explores how easily people will believe stories that are fed to them as truth despite all logical senses and their outright impossibility.

A true‑story drama following Millie Stein, who secretly shelters the Rosenbergs' children after the couple’s arrest, forcing her to confront friendship, loyalty, and injustice amid the Cold War’s espionage hunt.