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Best New Books Released in 2021 by Indian Authors
India is a vast, varied and culturally very diverse country that it could be a continent in itself. Getting to know this country intimately is a dream many Indians hold close to their heart. But it is an expensive affair.
Another better and less expensive way is getting to know the land through stories and true accounts of the very people of this rich and beautiful country.
These books will take you on that journey into beauty, history, politics, and geography. Some of the events and books are brutal but essential because that is life. Some of these are just light-reads that you can enjoy and forget.
But all of them are the latest trending works of the world of Indian Literature.
Take your pick.
Best New Releases in January 2021 by Indian Authors
History
A common thread that connects Indian history, mythology, art, literature, folklore and social belief are Horses.
In this stimulating and singularly intellectual debut, Yashaswini Chandra takes us on the trace of the horse within India. What follows is an astonishing and energizing journey, covering caravan-trade routes originating in Central Asia and Tibet, sea routes from the Middle East, and the kingdoms of different sultans and Mughal emperors, the south Indian dominions as well as the Rajput horse-warrior states.
In the end, what is most memorable is that the history of the horse in India, mirroring that of its human inhabitants, is a tale of migration and permanent intermingling. The horse is thus an exceptional and fitting vantage from which to learn the history of the land, influenced as it was by this most influential of animals.
Simon & Schuster India
‘But now, having travelled to the frontier of the world of sins, I no longer hesitated in trampling over the remnants of the goodness in my heart.’
Manada, Maani didi, Feroza Bibi, Miss Mukherjee – the persuasive identities of our charming protagonist as she sashays through a life that can be seen as unfair yet, also, curiously, empowering and honest. Manada’s interesting life story takes her from her wealthy pampered upbringing to a life of corruption and prostitution after she flees with her married lover when in her mid-teens.
Looking beyond ideas of morality and accusations, we are presented a life of immense beauty and strength, which is both grand in its scope and deeply intimate in its portrayal.
Juggernaut
Non-fiction
As India confronts some of its biggest challenges, the country’s most influential voices write about what freedom means to them. Stimulating, penetrating and full thought provoking – this is the book of our times.
Hamish Hamilton
Non-fiction
Summer of 2014, two teenagers disappeared from their home in the village of Katra Sadatganj in Uttar Pradesh, one night. The next morning India woke up to the shocking image of their dead bodies hanging from a tree in a mango orchard.
Who were they and what had happened to them?
In the following months, the investigation into their deaths would bring down everything that their small community held to be true and it will initiate a national discussion about sex and violence.
Best New Releases in February 2021 by Indian Authors
Juggernaut
Anita Agnihotri though her writing enlightens with crisp focus a series of overlapping themes: female feticide, sexual assault, the violence of caste, feudal labor relations, farmers’ suicides and Climate change in all its manifestations. She does so through the lives of farmers, migrant laborers and activists in Marathi and Western Maharashtra. Formally fundamental, inflammable and deeply compassionate, this novel tells the murkiest truths about contemporary India.
Harper Perennial India
Fiction – Translated
When they were first published, the author’s stories surprised readers with their very intimate opneness and no-holds-bared celebration of female desire. She is now popularly appreciated as one of the most essential contemporary writers in Malayalam.
Brilliantly translated by award-winning translator Fathima E.V., Baby Doll brings a complete selection of Gracy's work to English readers for the very first time.
Harper Collins India
When a brawny personal trainer is found suffocated to death under an overloaded barbell at the sophisticated Delhi Turf Club, before the club elections, it is first believed to be a freak accident. But soon, it becomes apparent that one of the members of the DTC is a cold-blooded murderer.
Anuja Chauhan is back with a bloody good romance set in the throbbing heart of Lutyen's Delhi.
Best New Releases in March 2021 by Indian Authors
Aleph Book Company; Rupa Publications
Ghazala Wahab has written an impressive reflection on what it means to be Muslim in today’s India.
She combines history with memory to put forth a touching community report that every Indian must read. Sensitive, compassionate and deeply moving the book has many stories to capture your heart.
Biographies/ Translated Non-Fiction
Harper Collins
Can the dead tell their stories? In the hands of a good forensic surgeon, yes they can.
Initially published in 2010 in Malayalam as Oru Police Surgeonte Ormakkurippukal, this is the bestselling memoir of Kerala's most popular forensic surgeon, Dr B. Umadathan.
Famously recognized as the 'Sherlock Holmes of Kerala', Dr Umadathan revisits some of his bizarre and most fascinating cases, like the Chacko murder masterminded by Sukumara Kurup; the sensational Polakkulam case; and the puzzling Panoor Soman case.
Best New Releases in April 2021 by Indian Authors
Westland
Kabir Bedi, an international star and a man—like all men—with strengths and weaknesses.
Stories I Must Tell is the candid and absorbing memoir of a man who holds nothing back, in love or in storytelling. Story of a middle-class boy from Delhi whose career now spans the globe. The tale of how he survived the roller-coaster ride of the making, unmaking and remaking of him as a person.
Fourth Estate India
Biography
With moving clarity, Farah Bashir captures critical moments from her girlhood amidst the increasing trauma and turmoil of passing years. This deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir depicts how regional conflict secretly affects everyday lives in the Paradise on Heaven - Kashmir.
Essays/Travel Writing
Harper Collins
The Brahmaputra is the largest river in India. After its union with the Ganga in Bangladesh, it becomes the largest in Asia. In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury sets out to follow its interwoven course from Tibet where it enters India down to where it meets the Ganga at a place marked by the biggest pleasure district in Bangladesh.
This is a genre-bending book that touches several controversial themes as it balances travel, memoir and history with the present.
Best New Releases in May 2021 by Indian Authors
Harper Collins
History
Maharashtra is among the country's biggest, richest, most substantial constituents. A great state in title and in deed that has been the birthplace of individuals and events that have helped build India.
Girish Kuber - seasoned journalist and one of Maharashtra's leading opinion makers - tells its story in Renaissance State. Taking in his vast stroke the region's politics, society and history from the time of the Satavahanas down to the present day, he chronicles a number of lesser-known tales.
This is the interpretation of the making of Maharashtra that its proud people deserved but had as yet remained unwritten.
Harper Collins
Politics
Sikkim is a mystery for most. Its history and its 1975 merger with India shrouded in secrecy. This book fills the gaps on both fronts, blending insights into the former royal kingdom's unique history with the interesting story of how it became India's twenty-second state.
Harper Collins
Biography/true Account
The countrywide lockdown in 2020 to restrain the spread of Covid-19 left millions of migrant laborers without jobs, food and shelter. Frantic and stranded, most took to the road, embarking on the long, often fatal, way back home.
Ritesh, Ashish, Ram Babu, Sonu, Krishna, Sandeep and Mukesh, migrants from Bihar, started a similar journey on their bicycles that went on for seven days and seven nights. Their distressing trip from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, to their hometown of Saharsa as they faced police lathis and insults, and battled hunger, exhaustion and fear, was documented by National Award-winning filmmaker Vinod Kapri.
1232 km is a story of the astonishing courage of seven men in the face of remarkable odds.
Best New Releases in June 2021 by Indian Authors
More than 40 new and previously unpublished stories and autobiographical writings by Satyajit Ray. A collector's item, Three Rays is a must read for those who are interested in literature.
The first book in 'The Penguin Ray Library' series, Three Rays is an endeavor to capture the brilliance of this Renaissance man and to disseminate the Master's works to a wide spectrum of readers.
Vintage Books
Poetry
This first biography of Agha Shahid Ali offers an elegant depiction of the poet and the world he lived in.
Shahid is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets from the Indian subcontinent, and his works are read globally. An inventor of ghazal writing in English, he wrote expansively about loss, nostalgia and home. A witness to the conflict that ravaged his homeland Kashmir Shahid has today become a symbol of hope in a violent world.
In this memoir, Manan Kapoor explores the concerns that molded Shahid's life and works, following in the footsteps of the 'Beloved Witness' from Kashmir to New Delhi and finally to the United States.
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