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	R. K. Narayan - The Mahabharata The Mahabharata is some 3,500 years old and is the longest poem in any language. It is one of the founding epics of Indian culture and, with its mixture of cosmic drama and profound philosophy, it holds a unique place in world literature. In this drastically shortened prose rendering, Narayan uses all his extraordinary talents to convey to a modern reader why this is such a great story. Filled with vivid characters, obsessed with the rise and fall of gods, empires and heroes, Narayan's Mahabharata is an enormously enjoyable experience and the perfect introduction to India's out of this world cosmology. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0141185007 Published: 2001 Paperback: 208 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £8.99


	V. S. Naipaul - India: A Million Mutinies Now Naipaul returns to the country with which he has a close yet oblique relationship. He provides an in-depth analysis of society in India, from high to low. '...indispensable for anyone who wants seriously to come to grips with the experience of India' - New York Times Book Review V. S. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0749399201 Published: 1991 Paperback: 528 pages Price: £8.99


	R. K. Narayan - Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories An enchanting collection from India's foremost storyteller, rich in wry, warmly observed characters from every walk of Indian life - merchants, beggars, herdsmen, rogues - all of whose lives are microcosms of the human experience. Like Nambi in the title story, Narayan has the mesmeric ability to spellbind his audience. This he achieves with a masterful combination of economy and rhythm, creating haunting images and a variety of settings to evoke a unique paradox of reality and folklore. Publisher: Penguin Classic ISBN: 0141186216 Published: 2001 Paperback: 208 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £8.99


	Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story, the tale of Lata - and her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them, it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny. 'A Suitable Boy may prove to be the most...prodigious work of the latter half of this century...You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life' - Daniel Johnson, The Times, UK Publisher: Orion/Phoenix ISBN: 1857990889 Published: 1994 Paperback: 1504 pages, 198 x 129 mm Price: £9.99


	Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and finds himself mysteriously 'handcuffed to history' by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent - and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts - inner voices and a wildly sensitive sense of smell - we are drawn into a fascinating family saga set against the vast, colourful background of the India of this century. Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0099578514 Published: 1995 Paperback: 464 pages, 198 x 129 mm Price: £7.99


	Mulk Raj Anand - Untouchable In Mulk Raj Anand's finest and most controversial novel he conveys precisely, with urgency and barely disguised fury, what it might feel like to be one of India's Untouchables. Bakha is a young man, a proud and even an attractive young man, but nonetheless he is an outcast in a system that is now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this re-creation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and latrine-cleaner, Anand poured a vitality, fire and richness of detail that have caused him to be acclaimed as his country's Charles Dickens as well as the twentieth century's greatest revealer of the 'other' India. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140183957 Published: 1989 Paperback: 160 pages, 129 x 198 mm


	Rabindranath Tagore - Selected Short Stories Tagore was the first romantic poet and the first Bengali to write short stories, a form he adopted from his reading of European short stories. This collection is a representative selection from the span of his career. Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140188541 Published: 1994 Paperback: 336 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £9.99


	Rudyard Kipling - Kim Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. Kim is white, a sahib, although born in India. While he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life. A celebration of their friendship in an often hostile environment, Kim captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0141183632 Published: 2000 Paperback: 368 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £6.99


	E. M. Forster - A Passage to India A mysterious incident at the Marabar caves, involving Adela Quested, newly arrived from England, and the presumed guilt of charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, are at the centre of Forster's magnificent novel of India during the Raj. Topical now, as in 1924, in its evocation of the dangers and ambiguities of colonialism, as Forster himself said, it is 'about something wider than politics, about the search of the human race for a lasting home, about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky, about the horror lurking in the Marabar caves...' Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0141183101 Published: 2000 Paperback: 368 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £8.99


	Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar The Direct-Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur and the Trans-Siberian Express - only a few of the evocative names that fill this, the story of Paul Theroux's epic journey by rail through India and Asia. A journey on which he encounters a huge variety of places and people, food, faiths and cultures, and which has at its heart an enduring fascination with trains and railways. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 014024980X Published: 1996 Paperback: 384 pages Price: £8.99


	Sarah Macdonald - Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure After backpacking her way around India, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. And when a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists that she will one day return - and for love - she screams 'Never!' and gives India, and him, the finger. But eleven years later, his prophecy comes true. When the love of her life is posted to India, she leaves her dream job as a radio DJ in Sydney to follow her fiancé to New Delhi. It seems like the ultimate sacrifice and it almost kills her - literally. One smoggy night, a sadhu smeared in human ashes curses her and she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia. She survives, but not before she has faced some serious questions about her own mortality and inner spiritual void, not to mention unsightly hair loss. It's enough to send a rapidly balding atheist on a wild journey through India in search of the meaning of life and death. From spiritual retreats to crumbling nirvanas, war zones and nightclubs, and with the help of the Dalai Lama, a real-life goddess and a couple of Bollywood stars - among many others - Sarah Macdonald discovers a hell of a lot more. Publisher: Bantam ISBN: 0553816012 Published: 2004 Paperback: 320 pages, 198 x 127 mm Price: £7.99


	Justine Hardy - Bollywood Boy Bollywood - studio city, a fantasy-fodder factory, the Bombay-based film capital of the Indian subcontinent. Here every year the Hindi film industry pumps out twice as many pictures as Hollywood to satisfy the romantic cravings of its billion-strong audience, from the mobile-wielding city dwellers to the villagers transfixed by dancing images flickering on a dusty courtyard wall. Enter Hrithik Roshan, new idol of the silver screen, seducing both the industry and the women of India in a flurry of triceps and biceps, tight T-shirts and slick dance moves. Bollywood Boy follows Hrithik's meteoric rise through the celluloid firmament. It could be straight from one of the film industry's own big-budget schlockbusters, with its heroes, heroines, villains, exotic locations, a cast of thousands, myriad costume changes and highly charged dop-de-bop dance routines. And like any good cinema drama, there is the big chase scene as Justine tries to track down the man behind the hype, the hysteria and the silver disco suits. But there is a dark side to all of this, the moment when the lights go out and the hero stumbles - the moment in Bollywood when people die because they have not played by the underworld code. For beneath the glittering surface of India's tinsel town lurk shady racketeers who use the film industry to make serious black money. In Bombay, the underworld is king. Welcome to Bollywood. Publisher: John Murray ISBN: 0719564859 Published: 2003 Paperback Price: £7.99

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