Books like Dollar bahu by Sudhā Mūrti

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.

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.

A reimagining of the epic tale of the Mahabharat, told from the perspective of Panchaali, the wife of the Pandavas, as she balances her wives' kingdoms and faces the threats of war and betrayal.

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.

In the years leading to the Opium Wars, the slave ship Ibis carries a diverse crew of sailors, stowaways, convicts, and passengers—including a bankrupt raja, a widowed village woman, a mulatto American, and an evangelical opium trader—who bond as ship-brothers on a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean.

Deborah Levy’s memoir, The Cost of Living, interrogates the social limits imposed on women and the yearning for a self‑authored life, weaving reflections on feminism and literary influences.

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.

Translated from Kannada.

A poignant debut novel about Imelda, her brother Augustine, and their son Em, a vibrant woman whose bipolar disorder shapes and challenges their tight-knit family in contemporary India.

Made into a powerful, award-winning film in 1970, this important Kannada novel of the sixties has received widespread acclaim from both critics and general readers since its first publication in 1965. As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village of Karnataka, "Samskara" serves as an allegory rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious man living in a community of priests gone to seed. A death, which stands as the central event in the plot, brings in its wake a plague, many more deaths, live questions with only dead answers, moral chaos, and the rebirth of one man. The volume provides a useful glossary of Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms. Notes and an afterword enhance the self-contained, faithful, and yet readable translation