Indian Literature

[Mirabell]

Have Narayan's the guide in my amazon basket. Other than that I usually read canadians or americans of indian descent who write about india, like vikram seth, rohinton mistry, vikram chandra.

but real indian lit? A few names, that's all. Tagore, of course. G. V. Desani, of course. The upanishads, the veda, the Bhagavad Gita. From here on even the names are becoming scarce.

So. Any readers of indian lit here?

 

[saliotthomas]

I have the same probleme Mirabell,i love India but find it's mostly expatriate that write best about their country.
The one local i read while staying there were very dark and depressing,not showing the humourus,mad side that make the sub-continent so lovable.
Anita Desai (in India ?)is one of my forever try-and-give up author.Arundhati Roy with her god of small thing i found a little artificial,and worst since she got a mission.
Salman Rushdi is also Indian -British and as it's high and low.
I loved the Mark Tully's books,he was the director of the BBC in India(i think!)and as a very good collection of short stories,very just and well wrtiten.
If you read French the Mahabharata by jean-claude Carriere is a delightfull summery of the story.Also his Dictionnaire amoureux de l'Inde is a lovely little book (the title saying all!)

 

[Mirabell]

This may be more confusing than helpful, but here's a list, compiled by another board's resident expert and friend:

The updated list, now a big mess with Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Malyalam,
Kannadaga, Marathi etc. And politics section is pretty small..


Theological/Philosophical

1. The Vedas
2. The Upanishads
3. The Puranas
4. The Mahabharata
5. The Ramayana
6. The Bhagavad Gita
7. The Brahma Sutras
8. The Thirukkural
9. The Sutta Pitaka
10. The Guru Garanth Sahib
11. The Quran
12. The Bible


Literature

1. Ramacaritamanasa - Gosvami Tulsidas
2. Ecstatic Poems - Kabir
3. Cilappatikaram - Llango Adigal
4. Manimekalai - Seethalai Sathanar
5. Civaka Cintamani - Tirutakkatevar
6. Gitanjali, Ghare Baire - Rabindarnath Tagore
7. Raghuvamsa, Kumarasambhava, Shakuntala - Kalidasa
8. Shah Jo Risalo - Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai
9. Sachal Jo Kalaam - Sachal Sarmast
10. Collected Poetry - Shiekh Ayaz
11. Heer - Waris Shah
12. Deewan-e-Ghalib - Mirza Asad Ullah Khan Ghalib
13. Karbala - Mir Babar Ali Anis
14. Deewan-e-Farid - Khwaja Ghulam Farid
15. Five Plays - Vijay Tendulkar
1. Kamala
2. Silence! The Court Is In Session
3. Sakharam Binder
4. The Vultures
5. Encounter In Umbugland
16. Complete Poetic Works - Mohammad Iqbal
1. Bang-e-Dara
2. Bal-e-Jibril
3. Armaghan-e-Hijaz
4. Shikwa
17. Complete Poetic Works - Subrmanya Bharati
18. Poetic Works - Sahir Ludhianvi
19. Mavra - Noon Meeem Rashid
20. Poetry - Bulleh Shah
21. Poetic Works - Shiv Kumar Batalvi
22. Kagaj Te Canvas, Sunehe - Amrita Pretam
23. Registan Vich Lakarhara - Harbhajan Singh
24. Nuskha-Hai-Wafa - Faiz Ahmed Faiz
25. Yayati - Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar
26. Mrityunjay - Shivaji Sawant
27. Poetic Works - Arun Kolatkar
28. Plays - Girish Karnad
29. Shabdangal - Vaikom Muhammad Basheer
30. Dharmapuranam, Legends of Khasak - O. V. Vijayan
31. Samskara - U. R. Ananthamurthy
32. Shei Shomoy - Sunil Gangopadhyay
33. Peshawar Express - Krishan Chandar
34. Train To Pakistan - Khushwant Singh
35. Baz Nama - Khushhaal Khan Khattak
36. Aag Ka Darya - Qurat-ul-Ain Haider
37. The Guide - R. K. Narayan
38. All About H. Hatterr - G. V. Desani
39. The Autobiography Of An Unknown Indian - Nirad C. Chaudhuri
40. An Anthology of Progressive Writer's Movement
41. India Trilogy: - V. S. Naipaul (non-fiction)
1. An Area Of Darkness
2. A Wounded Civilization
3. A Million Mutinies Now
42. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Political

1. Arthashastra, Nitishastra - Chanakya
2. Tuzk-e-Babri - Zaheer Uddin Babar
3. The Story of My Experiments with Truth - M. K. Gandhi
4. 1857 - The First War of Independence, Hindutva - V. D. Savarkar
5. 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League Allahabad - Mohammad Iqbal
6. The Discovery of India - Jawaharlal Nehru
7. India Wins Freedom - Abul Kalam Azad
8. Who Were Shudras?, Pakistan or Partition Of India - B. R. Ambedkar
9. The Constitution of India

direct link

 

[Jayaprakash]

kpjayan's remarks on Indian writing in Indian languages on the Man Booker Prize thread inspired me to bump this thread up.

Sadly, I'm reliant on translations too, in this respect. There are too many languages, and while I can muddle by in Hindi, my brush with Hindi literature in college often found me out of my depth.

There are several translated works I have enjoyed, by and large more so than Indian writing in English. I've found more authenticity as well as, in small pockets, more real innovation in these books.

There are two short story collection I'd like to mention: Snake Catcher by Naiyer Masud (Urdu) and Fair Tree Of The Void (Marathi) by Vilas Sarang. Both writers can be loosely described as Kafkaesque, with Beckett and Borges looming on the horizon as well. More importantly, both take the atmosphere of their surroundings and use a surrealist approach to illuminate what goes on in people's minds. They can be referenced by the sort of namechecks I've just mentioned, but are, I think, both quite unique and unlike anything else.

The Legends Of Khasak by OV Vijayan was a watershed for Malyali fiction. First envisaged as yet another work of Marxist realism, the author's disaffection with Marxism resulted in a heady mix of dream, reality and fantasy and a novel more concerned with finding one's spiritual centre than in revolutionary politics. I love the fable-like turns the story takes and the richly magical denizens and legends of the village of Khasak, while harbouring reservations about Vijayan's anti-rational call for spiritual renewal.

Five Cents Of Land by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan is firmly in the social realist camp. It's a stark, unsentimental look at the many ways in which post-Independance India betrayed the ideals of the freedom movement, while holding out an iota of hope for those who come after. It says more about how modern India got the way it has than a library full of diasporic 'plaint.

I am sure there are many more authors and books worth mentioning. I haven't spoken about Premchand, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, MT Vasudevan Nair and so many more. I invite others to fill in the many gaps, mentioning where English translations are available, in the hope that someone might be interested to dig deeper.

 

[Eric]

I'm happy with Jayaprakash's last posting about translations. I simply do not have time to examine what must be a huge number of literatures spread across the Indian subcontinent, but I get short-tempered with my fellow Brits, when they yet again find some weak excuse for dismissing virtually every translated book published nowadays coming from Europe, let alone India, whilst going on and on about one prize, the Booker, awarded to an English-language-only author. (The rest of the world need not apply.)

That's what translations are for: to open our eyes to new vistas. I cannot even "muddle by" in any of the languages of India. And I've never been there. But I feel that the translation situation into English is ludicrously inadequate. Only the cr?me de la cr?me of Indians, those with what amounts to an Anglo education, are given a chance by British and American publishers to represent their country with novels. And again and again, they are connected with teaching posts or, at the very least, study at a British or U.S. university. These are, in a sense, Indian on the outside, Anglo-American within. If I read about India, I want to read what an Indian writes about India (and originally) in an Indian language.

The English language is a fine way for Indian writers, academics and intellectuals to connect with the outside world, but when it comes to literature, I get the feeling, as Jayaprakash suggests, that what is written in the vernacular is more genuine, authentic.

So the names that Jayaprakash gives are valuable pointers to the literary world of "real" India.

Could Jayapradash explain the meaning, plus geographical and social connotations of "Malyali"? Do caste or religion come into it, or is it just a literature from a particular part of India?

 

[Jayaprakash]

Sorry, I should have mentioned this. Malayalam is the language spoken in Kerala, a state in South India. It's a language and the literature thereof, which could include works by people of various castes and religions. A Malyali is a speaker of Malayalam. I suppose a better spelling is Malayali.

 

[kpjayan]

geographical and social connotations of "Malyali"? Do caste or religion come into it, or is it just a literature from a particular part of India?

Malayali , is someone who speaks the Language Malayalam or whose mother tongue is Malayalam ( that includes me). It is the language spoken in the southwest state of Kerala.

While it is more complex than we can explain here, there are differences among the people who speak various language and are from Different part of the country. A multi-lingual , multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society.

Now being in Bangalore, I do speak the local Language , that is Kannada, and few neighboring languages like Tamil and Telugu, apart from Hindi. The reason I am mentioning this here is that though we are different ethnically and geographically, the constant movement of people from place to place has to an extend reduced these differences.

Having said that not many people take interest in the regional language literature. While I am informed considerably well on Malayalam Literature, my knowledge and reading of the other Indian Literature are through translations, which I should add , is very very common. Thus, Tamil , Kannada, Bengali and Marathi literatures are part of my reading.

The reason, I guess , about these literature not being popular in the English speaking world , is largely due to poor translation. Most of them are translated by the native speaking person to English, and my experience with this was disappointing.

 

[nnyhav]

Wiki gives some notion of the scope:
Indian literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the interested English reader, one problem, touched upon at threadstart, is that the literary economy differentiates between domestic consumption and export: translations, like recommendations, can be hard to come by.

 

[Max Cairnduff]

Over at the Guardian thread How did The White Tiger capture the Booker? | Books | guardian.co.uk a poster named Junglee mentioned several authors:

Amit Chaudhri, Akhil Sharma, Siddhartha Deb, Raj Kamal Jha or Vikram Chandra

I have some Chandra at home, and Chaudhri's name rings a bell (though I've not read any). But anyone know these authors well?

Here's some suggestions made by Junglee on that thread:

A novel I really liked was Surface by Siddhartha Deb. It is about a young journalist from Delhi who becomes entwined in a story in India's north-east, where the state is engaged in a low level guerilla war against maoist and tribal insurgents. The template is Heart of Darkness, the writing is slow, temperate; this is a narrative in which nothing is to be trusted, in which all is murk, in which violence and its cause and effect is impossible to delineate, in which when you go looking for truth you only find ghosts and blind alleys.

An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma is a really disturbing, but utterly absorbing and dark novel about a middle aged low level political thug in Delhi, who works as a fixer for a Congress Party MP. His voice is like a more wretched, humourless Humbert channeled through the simultaneous self loathing of Dostoevsky's narrator from Notes from the Underground. He also sexually abuses his daughter, and does anything to prostrate himself before power, whoever is in power, whatever is power. It sounds grim, but it is compelling and is, I think, one of the greatest Indian novels of the last twenty years. The most startling thing is that Sharma actually makes us see the world through his eyes, he even makes us search for the glimmer of light in the character of a man who is bestial.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. About 900 pages I think. Probably closest in actual verve and commercial narrative drive to Adiga's work. Could have been trimmed by a couple of hundred pages at least, but it does reward you as you read. Gangsters, politicians, Bollywood, corruption, poverty, billionaires, it's all in there.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup. A breezy, light read about a kid from a slum who ends up on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It's just been made into a brilliant movie called Slumdog Millionaire by the director Danny Boyle.

 

[Eric]

Thanks for #6, Jayaprakash. You have to remember that despite the "slight presence" of Brits in India during the Raj, we members of younger generations of Brititude know very little indeed about the indigenous cultural mappings of the subcontinent.

I would even opine, though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that there are people in Blighty that think that English is the only language that Indians write in, except for a few writers, termed "untranslatables" who are a lower caste of authors, preferably never to be spoken about in polite British circles.

Kpjayan: poor translation is the bane of the literary world. When a few self-serving fanatics "seize" a language and monopolise its translation into, say, English, then their faults and omissions cause Britain to write off whole literatures. As Britain cannot even cope with neighbouring France and its literature, and show a decent interest in it, you can hardly hope that Brits will be so suave and open-minded as to take on board the many language-literatures of an ex-colony. Despite the fact that gurus lecture us about postcolonialism and literature, I fear that the condescending colonial attitude to literature translated from indigenous Indian languages is still very much in place in Britain.

I am an English-speaking Brit myself and admire many things about my country, but the attitude to literatures written in "non-English" is not one of them. Just about every list I see on the internet of Indian literature is really a list of authors who have been dissuaded from writing in their mother-tongue, and have been persuaded to write in English so as to have direct access to "the market".

 

[Jayaprakash]

The ironic thing is that many Indians I know also confine themselves to English works, perceiving books in 'regional languages' as boring, stodgy and serious. I did that for years myself until a good friend of mine bought me Vilas Sarang's book and I realised there was a whole world of literatures to explore within my own nation.

 

[Funhouse]

Over at the Guardian thread How did The White Tiger capture the Booker? | Books | guardian.co.uk a poster named Junglee mentioned several authors:

Amit Chaudhri, Akhil Sharma, Siddhartha Deb, Raj Kamal Jha or Vikram Chandra

I have some Chandra at home, and Chaudhri's name rings a bell (though I've not read any). But anyone know these authors well?

I am very, very keen on some of these authors. I reviewed Deb's first novel, The Point of Return, for The Modern Word. You can read the review here.

Raj Kamal Jha is a wonderful writer. Really enjoyed his first two novels, The Blue Bedspread and If You Are Afraid of Heights.

Vikram Chandra is one of the best Indian writers in English at the moment. I put down Sacred Games half way through for a breather, but it is very good, as were Red Earth and Pouring Rain and Love and Longing in Bombay.

Amitav Ghosh should have won the Booker instead of Adiga (if we're confining ourselves to the shortlist). Sea of Poppies is not his best novel (that would be The Shadow Lines), but everything he has written is well worth reading.

Vikram Seth is very well known, of course, and deservedly so - such a varied writer.

Rohinton Mistry is a writer that everyone should check out, and other worthwhile reads include Pankaj Mishra, Mukul Kesavan and Ruchir Joshi.

 

[Eric]

I don't doubt that some of the local books are what you term "boring, stodgy and serious". It strikes me as a good solution that people writing in an indigenous language can always read gems of world literature in English, but still express themselves in their mother-tongues, thereby introducing modernism, postmodernism or whatever to Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, etc., literature.

Obviously, English is great as a kind of neutral (?) Esperanto, to help people all over India communicate, and have access to what is being written abroad.

Funhouse: I also read a critic called Amal Chatterjee (implies Bengali background, surely, though I believe he was born in Sri Lanka) writing in my Dutch daily Trouw that Ghosh or Sebastian Barry should have won the Booker, and that the winner was a little lightweight.

 

[Funhouse]

Funhouse: I also read a critic called Amal Chatterjee (implies Bengali background, surely, though I believe he was born in Sri Lanka) writing in my Dutch daily Trouw that Ghosh or Sebastian Barry should have won the Booker, and that the winner was a little lightweight.

Yeah, I'd entirely agree with that assessment (if we're restricting ourselves to what was actually on the shortlist).

 

[kpjayan]

For someone who wants to read the contemporary writers in indian language, I can suggest this book, which has een translated to French recently, by Luc Roger, a Belgian philologist. I had read the original (in Malayalam) and was very impressed. I cant vouch for the translation though.

"Tharavad ce que de sait le Soufi" by K P Ramanunni

Kailash Editions - Livres sur l'asie - Kailash - DETAIL

The same has been published in English as "What sufi said" translated by R E Asher.

 

[Jayaprakash]

What the Sufi Said

What the Sufi Said revolves around the love and marriage between Mamooty, a Muslim and Karthy, a Nair Hindu. Though converted to Islam, Karthy is unable to resist the primeval tug of her original religion. Karthy is a rare example of a confident woman who is sufficient unto herself. In What the Sufi Said, we see sex without guilt or vulgarity. We see pantheistic pagan traditions asserting themselves over members of all communities�as Mother Goddess for Hindus, as the Beevi and Jarum for the Muslims.

Thanks Jayan, I think I'll have to pick this one up. (I do hope the blurb writer meant that Karthy is a rare example of a confident woman who is sufficient unto herself as a character in Indian fiction or some such.)

It's published in India by Rupa, no idea if it's been picked up by foreign distributors/publishers. Both Rupa and Orient Longman have a pretty good selection of Indian fiction, translater into or written in English. That doesn't help people from elsewhere much, I realise.

 

[k2doggo]

Both Rupa and Orient Longman have a pretty good selection of Indian fiction, translater into or written in English. That doesn't help people from elsewhere much, I realise.

there are a few distributors through which a westerner can easily get hold of stuff from rupa, penguin india, and the other wonderful presses...for instance:
http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/home.asp
these guys ship straight from india but they discount a lot, and only charge $5/book for the freight--emphasis is on religious books but not at all entirely--
Vedic Books: Amazing books from India direct!

and there are some publishers whose output is so amazing that it's worth ordering their stuff direct from india, despite the shipping costs...like:
Welcome To Motilal Banarsidass:India's Largest Indological Publisher & Bookseller
and my personal favorite,
www.WritersWorkshopIndia.com-Indian Creative Writing in English

 

[kpjayan]

Here is an interview with Vikram Seth - The Hindu Magazine.

The Hindu : Magazine / Personality : To find the right words

 

[Jan Mbali]

Have been sorting out my bookshelves and came across a classic of Indian literature, falling to pieces, which made an impression on me long ago. Mulk Raj Anand's "Coolie" (1947), which is a searing look at the lot of an untouchable. He actually wrote a novel titled "Untouchable", which I have not read. A quick Wiki and other searches reveal he is credited with pioneering the translation of Punjabi and Hindi idioms into English. Unrelieved social realism, but more uncomfortable to read than heavy. He is often compared with Dickens, who I used to enjoy greatly, not least for his humour - but Anand is a much tighter writer with very little humour to lighten the burden. Dickens was suppose to have padded his prose because he was paid by the word, but he had a lot of fun doing it. More seriously, according tosome commentary I heard, the voting power of those same untouchables is beginning to upset the current political and social order in India. Interesting to compare what happened in England post-Dickens in terms of the social conditions that appear in his novels.

 

[Igu Soni]

Well, I found an essay by Vikram chandra about Indian writing in English:
The Cult of Authencity.

Also, one more interesting Indian author is Tarun J Tejpal, and he lives in India. He's the editor of Tehelka magazine which is famous for it's exposes of Indian Government officials. He's written two books: The Alchemy of Desire and The story of my Assassins.