Lifestyle /
South Asian Authored Summer Reads
Whether you’re looking for something to occupy your mind while your body relaxes poolside, or you want a distraction from the heat, pick up a new title this summer and travel through the pages to another world.
The Lives of Others
By Neel Mukherjee
Neel Mukherjee’s third novel was just long-listed for the Man Booker Prize for an epic tale of love, lies and generational differences in a Bengali family falling apart in 1967 Calcutta. The Ghoshes, elderly patriarch and matriarch, are ignorant to reality: that beneath the façade of peaceful domesticity, family life is far more turbulent.
Rivalries, destructive secrets, and a failing business are set against a backdrop of political and social unrest. Going unnoticed among the family backbiting, son and idealist Supratik is dangerously involved in extreme political activism. Mukherjee’s tale of family and social class ask us to re-examine our place in the world, what we think it takes to change that world, and at what price.
And the Mountains Echoed
By Khaled Hosseini
Released a little over a month ago, New York Times bestselling author (The Kite Runner) Khaled Hosseini’s third novel is gearing up to be as successful as his last two. Told as a series of intertwined stories, the book begins in 1952 in a small village in Afghanistan where Saboor’s decision to give up one of his children reverberates through generations.
A father tells his two young children about a boy taken by a div (an ogre), and how the boy’s fate wasn’t so terrible, and the following day gives his daughter away to a wealthy man in Kabul. Through the eyes of multiple characters, Hosseini examines familial relationships, and from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to Greece, he takes readers on a trip around the globe and through time, sharing the reality of life: how even people’s most selfless actions have the most complex, heartbreaking and/or uplifting results.
The Red Carpet
By Lavanya Sankaran
Whether you’re into a book that’s easy to put down or pick up at random, or maybe you’re looking for an oldy but goody, try a book of short stories like Lavanya Sankaran’s The Red Carpet. Her 2006 debut collection concerns Bangalore, “A potpourri of beggars and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways,” ever caught between past and present. Meet Ramu, a software employee who employs his mother as a matchmaker, or American-educated Tara who returns to visit her more traditional family.
Looking for social drama on all levels- from girls and their nannies, to neighbors or lovers, to staff with old-fashioned values conflicted over their more modern employers? Look no further. Visiting family this summer? Maybe you too can relate.
The Last Taxi Ride: A Ranjit Singh Novel
By A. X. Ahmad
If thrillers are more your speed, I recommend one of A. X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh mysteries. In Ahmad’s first book The Caretaker we are introduced to Ranjit Singh, former commander of an elite army squad whose life was ruined over one careless choice, and he was forced to leave India in dishonor.
Now in the second installment, Ranjit Singh, New York taxi driver, is accused of murdering Bollywood film icon Shabana Shah, whose body is discovered in Ranjit’s apartment. NYPD finds his fingerprints on the murder weapon, a statue of elephant god Ganesh. Now with only ally, Shabana’s Indian doorman missing, he has 10 days to prove his innocence…and his daughter is just about to come from India to visit. No pressure.
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