Books & Authors

Indian literature classics:

• Vedas (Rig, Sama, Yajur, Atharva) — ancient Sanskrit hymns.
• Ramayana — Valmiki.
• Mahabharata (incl. Bhagavad Gita) — Vyasa.
• Arthashastra — Kautilya (Chanakya).
• Manusmriti — Manu.
• Panchatantra — Vishnu Sharma.
• Hitopadesha — Narayana Pandit.
• Kamasutra — Vatsyayana.
• Meghaduta, Shakuntala, Raghuvamsha, Kumarsambhava — Kalidasa.
• Mudrarakshasa — Vishakhadatta.
• Mricchakatika — Shudraka.
• Harshacharita — Banabhatta.

Modern Indian English writers:

• Rabindranath Tagore — Gitanjali (Nobel 1913), Gora, The Home and the World.
• R. K. Narayan — Malgudi Days, The Guide, Swami and Friends.
• Mulk Raj Anand — Untouchable, Coolie.
• Raja Rao — Kanthapura.
• Khushwant Khanna — Train to Pakistan, A History of the Sikhs.
• Salman Rushdie — Midnight's Children (Booker 1981), Satanic Verses.
• V. S. Naipaul (Indian origin) — Nobel 2001.
• Arundhati Roy — The God of Small Things (Booker 1997), The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
• Vikram Seth — A Suitable Boy, An Equal Music.
• Amitav Ghosh — Shadow Lines, The Hungry Tide, Gun Island, Ibis trilogy.
• Aravind Adiga — The White Tiger (Booker 2008).
• Kiran Desai — The Inheritance of Loss (Booker 2006).
• Jhumpa Lahiri — Interpreter of Maladies (Pulitzer 2000), The Namesake.
• Chetan Bhagat — Five Point Someone, Two States.
• Ruskin Bond — children's literature; The Room on the Roof.

Indian regional language writers:

• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (Bengali) — wrote "Vande Mataram"; Anandamath.
• Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (Bengali) — Devdas, Parineeta.
• Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (Bengali) — Pather Panchali.
• Munshi Premchand (Hindi) — Godaan, Gaban, Nirmala.
• Subramania Bharati (Tamil) — patriotic poetry.
• Bharatendu Harishchandra — Hindi literature pioneer.
• Kuvempu (Kannada) — Jnanpith.
• Kamala Surayya / Kamala Das (Malayalam, English) — My Story.
• U. R. Ananthamurthy (Kannada) — Samskara.

International classics:

• William Shakespeare — Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello.
• Jane Austen — Pride and Prejudice, Emma.
• Charles Dickens — Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities.
• Leo Tolstoy — War and Peace, Anna Karenina.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky — Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov.
• Mark Twain — Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer.
• Ernest Hemingway — The Old Man and the Sea.
• George Orwell — 1984, Animal Farm.
• J. K. Rowling — Harry Potter series.
• Khaled Hosseini — The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Famous autobiographies / memoirs:

• My Experiments with Truth — M. K. Gandhi.
• The Discovery of India — Jawaharlal Nehru. (Also Glimpses of World History, An Autobiography.)
• Wings of Fire — A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
• India Wins Freedom — Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
• Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi — Katherine Frank.
• Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela.
• I Am Malala — Malala Yousafzai (with Christina Lamb).
• Becoming — Michelle Obama.
• Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson.

Recent literary prizes (2023–2025):

• Booker Prize 2023: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Ireland).
• Booker Prize 2024: Orbital by Samantha Harvey (UK).
• Booker Prize 2025: Flesh by David Szalay.
• International Booker 2024: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany).
• International Booker 2025: Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq — translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi. (First book translated from Kannada to win.)
• Nobel Literature 2023: Jon Fosse (Norway).
• Nobel Literature 2024: Han Kang (South Korea).
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2024: Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips.

Jnanpith Award (highest Indian literary award):

• First (1965): G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam, Otakkuzhal).
• Famous: M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Mahasweta Devi, Girish Karnad, Kuvempu, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Mahadevi Verma.
• 2022 Jnanpith: Damodar Mauzo (Konkani), Nilamani Phookan (Assamese).
• 2023 (announced 2024): Gulzar (Urdu), Rambhadracharya (Sanskrit).

Sahitya Akademi Awards: annual recognition for outstanding books in 24 Indian languages.

Some notable books matched to authors (common RRB favourites):

• Discovery of India → Nehru.
• India of My Dreams → Gandhi.
• Glimpses of World History → Nehru.
• Light of Asia → Sir Edwin Arnold (about Buddha).
• India After Gandhi → Ramachandra Guha.
• A Brief History of Time → Stephen Hawking.
• Origin of Species → Charles Darwin.
• Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto → Karl Marx, Engels.
• The Republic → Plato.
• Nicomachean Ethics → Aristotle.
• Wealth of Nations → Adam Smith.
• Mein Kampf → Adolf Hitler.
• Discovery → Robin Sharma (the lifestyle author of Monk Who Sold His Ferrari).
• Geetanjali (Gitanjali) → Tagore.
• Hind Swaraj → Gandhi.
• Anandmath (origin of "Vande Mataram") → Bankim Chandra.
• The Argumentative Indian, Development as Freedom → Amartya Sen.
• Poverty and Un-British Rule in India → Dadabhai Naoroji.
• Indica → Megasthenes.
• Rajatarangini → Kalhana.