The last decade transformed Indian literature.
Regional voices finally got the international recognition they deserved. Translated works won major prizes. Debut authors tackled subjects from domestic violence to climate change to Dalit identity. Award committees stopped ignoring books written in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi.
I've tracked Indian literature obsessively since 2015. This list represents the books that mattered—the ones that won awards, sparked conversations, and proved Indian writing is among the best in the world.
Some are in English. Many are translations. All are essential.
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2015-2017: The Foundation Years
These books set the tone for what Indian literature could achieve.
1. Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy (2016) ⭐ DSC Prize Winner
Three elderly women on a temple pilgrimage.
A young woman with a traumatic past. Their paths collide in the temple town of Jarmuli.
Anuradha Roy writes about violence with devastating restraint.
This novel explores abuse, survival, and the way trauma echoes through decades. The temple town becomes a character—sacred and sinister simultaneously.
I read this in one weekend and couldn't shake it for weeks.
- Best for: Literary fiction readers who can handle difficult themes
- Vibes: Temple town, trauma, elderly protagonists, literary fiction, DSC Prize winner
2. Adivasi Will Not Dance by HansdaSowvendra Shekhar (2017)
Short stories about Adivasi (tribal) life in Jharkhand.
Mining companies destroying forests. Government schemes that never help. Young people caught between tradition and modernity.Shekhar writes from inside his community—not as an outsider observing.
The title story is devastating. A folk musician is asked to perform for the same politicians who destroyed his village.
This book was briefly banned for "obscenity." It's not obscene—it's honest.
- Best for: Readers interested in marginalized voices and rural India
- Vibes: Adivasi life, Jharkhand, short stories, political, land rights
A young man in Mumbai navigates corporate life, failed relationships, and the emptiness of urban existence.
Solanki writes about the Indian middle class with unflinching honesty. His protagonist isn't heroic—he's ordinary, flawed, and searching for meaning in a city that doesn't care. The prose is sharp and contemporary. Mumbai feels alive and indifferent simultaneously.
This is literary fiction about modern India that doesn't romanticize anything.
- Best for: Readers who enjoy introspective literary fiction about urban life
- Vibes: Mumbai, corporate life, existential, literary fiction, debut novel, contemporary
A middle-class Delhi housewife begins an affair while her husband works in Dubai. What starts as escape becomes something more complicated.
Kapur gets inside the head of a woman rarely given voice in Indian fiction—the ordinary wife, neither victim nor rebel, just human. Mrs. Sharma's internal monologue is hypnotic. She justifies, rationalizes, and reveals herself slowly.
A bold, intimate novel about desire, class, and the lies we tell ourselves.
- Best for: Readers interested in women's inner lives and domestic fiction
- Vibes: Delhi, affair, middle-class, interior monologue, feminist, bold
Twenty years after The God of Small Things, Roy returned with this sprawling, ambitious novel.
Anjum is a transgender woman who builds a guest house in a Delhi graveyard. Tilo is caught in a love quadrangle. Their stories intersect in Kashmir.
This book challenges you. Roy's prose is dense and political. The structure jumps around. It's messy and deliberate—like India itself.
I struggled with this book but respected it. Roy isn't writing easy fiction. She's writing urgent political literature.
- Best for: Readers who want ambitious, political literary fiction
- Vibes: Transgender protagonist, Kashmir conflict, political, experimental, challenging
2018-2020: The Breakthrough Period
Indian literature started winning major international awards.
A young writer marries a charismatic professor.
The marriage becomes a prison. He controls everything—her writing, her body, her mind.
Kandasamy writes about domestic violence with unflinching precision. The narrator analyzes her own captivity in real time. It's claustrophobic and brilliant. The prose style shifts as her mental state deteriorates.
This book will make you uncomfortable. That's the point.
- Best for: Readers who can handle intense themes of domestic abuse
- Vibes: Domestic violence, marriage, literary fiction, feminist, intense
Four interconnected stories across India's landscapes—the Andaman Islands, Burma border, Himalayan fault lines, Baluchistan.
A geologist who talks to trees. A woman who sees ghosts. Lovers separated by partition.
Swarup writes about geology as romance and ecology as spirituality. The prose is dreamlike. The structure is unusual—four novellas that echo each other across time and space.
An astonishing debut. Unlike anything else in Indian fiction.
- Best for: Readers who love magical realism and nature writing
- Vibes: Magical realism, landscapes, interconnected stories, debut novel, lyrical
Shalini's mother has a mental illness.
A Kashmiri salesman visited yearly—he was the only warmth in her childhood. After her mother dies, Shalini travels to Kashmir to find him.What she discovers changes everything.
Vijay writes about fractured families and fractured nations. Kashmir's political violence mirrors Shalini's personal dysfunction. The novel moves slowly but rewards patience.
- Best for: Literary fiction readers interested in Kashmir
- Vibes: Kashmir, family secrets, political backdrop, slow-burn, JCB Prize winner
In a small town, communal tensions simmer. Hindu-Muslim relationships strain. A riot is coming—everyone can feel it.
Zaidi captures how ordinary prejudice becomes extraordinary violence. The multiple perspectives show how good people get pulled into hatred. It's prescient and disturbing.
- Best for: Readers interested in communal politics in India
- Vibes: Communal tension, multiple POVs, political, South India, prescient
Children are disappearing from a Delhi slum.
Nine-year-old Jai decides to investigate, using techniques from TV detective shows.
Anappara captures a child's voice perfectly—curious, brave, sometimes wrong. The mystery is real (based on actual missing children cases in India), but seen through innocent eyes. The ending broke me.
- Best for: Readers who love child narrators and mysteries with heart
- Vibes: Delhi slum, child narrator, missing children, mystery, Edgar Award
Ten characters across ten countries. A fisherman in Indonesia. A mother in Nigeria. A factory worker in China. Their stories interconnect across continents.
Kiran Bhat wrote this novel in ten different countries over five years. The ambition is staggering—a truly global novel that treats every corner of the world with equal weight. India is just one thread in a tapestry that spans humanity.
Experimental and demanding, but rewarding for patient readers.
- Best for: Readers who want truly global literary fiction
- Vibes: Global, interconnected stories, experimental, ambitious, ten countries, literary
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2021-2023: The Translation Revolution
Translated Indian literature finally got its due.
Neil is a second-generation Indian American teenager.
His neighbour Anita's mother has a secret: she melts gold stolen from other Indians to create a potion that transfers their ambition.
Magical realism meets immigrant experience meets satire of Indian American strivers. Sathian is sharp and funny about the pressures of "model minority" success.
- Best for: Indian diaspora readers, fans of magical realism
- Vibes: Indian American, magical realism, satire, ambition, debut novel
A verse narrative set in the Sundarbans, retelling the legend of Bon Bibi—the goddess who protects humans from Dokkhin Rai, a demon who takes the form of a tiger.
Amitav Ghosh wrote this as a poem. Yes, a full narrative poem. The rhythm is hypnotic, the language accessible yet lyrical. Salman Toor's dark illustrations perfectly capture the menace of the mangrove forest.
At just 60 pages, it's brief but unforgettable—a climate fable disguised as folklore.
- Best for: Fans of Amitav Ghosh, readers interested in environmental themes or Bengali folklore
- Vibes: Sundarbans, verse narrative, folklore, climate, tigers, illustrated, poetic
In a small town in the Himalayan foothills, a young woman's body is found. The investigation unravels secrets the community has buried for years.
Nilanjana Roy writes a literary thriller that's really about caste, gender, and the violence that small towns hide. The Himalayas are beautiful and menacing. The characters are flawed and real. The resolution doesn't offer easy answers.
Crime fiction with the depth of literary fiction.
- Best for: Readers who want literary thrillers with social commentary
- Vibes: Himalayan setting, crime, caste, gender violence, literary thriller, atmospheric
Translated from Urdu by Baran Farooqi.
A family's decline told through food. Each chapter centers on a dish that marks a milestone in their disintegration.
Jawed uses food as memory, identity, and loss. The translation preserves the Urdu novel's sensory richness.
- Best for: Readers who love food writing and family sagas
- Vibes: Translated from Urdu, food, family decline, sensory, literary
Three generations of a family in Kerala.
A curse: in every generation, someone dies by drowning. Spanning 1900-1977, Verghese weaves medicine, history, and family.
At 700+ pages, this is an epic. Verghese (author of Cutting for Stone) spent over a decade writing it. The medical details are precise. The family drama is universal.
- Best for: Readers who love multigenerational sagas
- Vibes: Kerala, multigenerational, medical themes, epic length, Carnegie Medal
Translated from Tamil by Janani Kannan.
In a village, a rooster becomes the center of conflict between castes. What seems like a simple story about a bird becomes a meditation on caste violence and power.
Murugan is a master. The allegory is clear but never heavy-handed.
- Best for: Readers interested in caste dynamics and rural India
- Vibes: Translated from Tamil, caste, allegory, village life, JCB Prize winner
2024-2025: The New Wave
The most recent years brought breakthrough voices and historic wins.
Translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil.
Maria is a recently divorced woman questioning everything—her identity, her breakdown, her family's expectations.
Mary writes about mental illness without romanticizing it. Maria is messy, funny, and real. The translation is elegant.
- Best for: Readers who want complex female protagonists
- Vibes: Translated from Malayalam, mental health, divorce, feminist, debut
Yes, the comedian.
His debut novel is wildly inventive—a sentient wall struggles with artistic expression, a lapel pin gives only truthful advice, and a Danish police officer becomes enlightened.
Gill brings his signature humor but adds philosophical depth. It's strange, thought-provoking, and unlike anything else in Indian fiction.
Best for: Readers who want something completely different
Vibes: Debut, comedian author, experimental, philosophical, humor
A young Italian man starts leading a spiritual life after an accident, only to discover the banalities of the path. Chatterjee (author of English, August) brings his trademark wit.
"When I was writing it, I thought it was one hell of a boring story," Chatterjee said at the award ceremony. It's not—it's profound.
- Best for: Readers who enjoy philosophical fiction with humor
- Vibes: Spirituality, satire, philosophical, JCB Prize winner, literary
A page-turner set in a small town. Kannanari forces you to slow down and think about how communities punish those who don't conform.
A remarkable debut that made the JCB shortlist.
- Best for: Readers who want literary fiction with thriller pacing
- Vibes: Small town, debut, literary thriller, conformity, JCB shortlist
HISTORIC: The first Kannada work and first short story collection to win the International Booker Prize.
Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, these twelve stories give voice to South Indian Muslim women—their prejudices, paradoxes, and trials. Mushtaq writes from the "Bandaya Sahitya" (Rebel Literature) tradition: anti-caste, feminist, secular.
The translation refuses to italicize Kannada words or add footnotes. It trusts the reader.
- Best for: Everyone. This is essential reading.
- Vibes: Translated from Kannada, International Booker winner, short stories, Muslim women, feminist, historic
Roy's first memoir. Written after her mother Mary Roy's death in 2022, it explores their complicated relationship—"my shelter and my storm.
"Fans get behind-the-scenes insight into her writing process. Critics get a fascinating character study. Everyone gets beautiful prose.
- Best for: Arundhati Roy fans and memoir lovers
- Vibes: Memoir, mother-daughter relationship, Kerala, literary
Essays on environmentalism, imperialism, and the ways humans occupy spaces. Ghosh's moral passion and intellectual curiosity are on full display.
Not fiction, but essential for understanding where Indian literature is headed.
- Best for: Readers interested in climate, colonialism, and big ideas
- Vibes: Essays, environment, colonialism, non-fiction, thought-provoking
Three generations of gay men in India.
Their personal journeys intertwine with the nation's evolving LGBTQ+ rights landscape.
Bhattacharya critiques the notion of linear progress—legal advances don't erase shame, loneliness, or the quest for acceptance. Nuanced and necessary.
- Best for: LGBTQ+ readers and anyone interested in queer Indian history
- Vibes: LGBTQ+, three generations, legal history, nuanced, important
Why This Decade Mattered
Indian literature in 2015 was good.
Indian literature in 2025 is extraordinary.
What changed? Translations got better. Award committees paid attention. Regional writers stopped being treated as "niche." International readers discovered that the best fiction in the world isn't always written in English.
This list only scratches the surface. For every book here, there are ten more I could have included. But these 25 represent the decade's arc—from literary fiction breaking through (Anuradha Roy, Madhuri Vijay) to translated works finally getting their due (Perumal Murugan, Banu Mushtaq) to debut novelists redefining what Indian fiction can be.
The next decade will be even better. I can't wait.
What's your favorite Indian book of the last decade? Let me know in the comments!
