Understanding India and Southeast Asia Public

A novel written about eight years after the Partition of India and Pakistan, this books captures the sheer madness and mindless violence surrounding the largest mass movement of people in history.

An AMAZING exploration of the development of Indian cuisine - the chapters on Chai blew my mind and is one of the best examinations of mercantilism, colonialism, and marketing you'll ever read.

A classic of Urdu literature in the style of "1001 Nights," this is a great demonstration of Indo-Islamic culture. Also really fun and entertaining!

This book puts the anticolonial struggle in South Asia in a larger, pan-Asian context and shows the development of nationalism in response to colonialism. While it shows it politics a bit, it is a pretty masterful intellectual history and might make you interested in looking at other Asian histories

Tagore was one of India's great artists and thinkers. An absolute polymath, this collection presents another view of nationalism generally and of Indian nationalism in particular. His conception, more rooted in a cosmopolitan cultural engagement with the world, is deeply relevant for today.

More of a work of Environmental history, I put it here because Guha, at least in some of the earlier chapters, places Indian thinkers in a global context and shows the impact of Indian environmental movements on the world. A bit of an esoteric choice - feel free to skip.

The first of Narayan's Malgudi novels, Swami and Friends is a classic comedy about the adventures of a young boy living in a small-town in South India. Really funny and touching. Great to pair with Ruskin Bond's "The Room on the Roof" for an Indian coming-of-age novel.

The first novel from one of India's best-loved authors. An Anglo-Indian author who chose to stay in India, Bond's novel captures the feeling of growing up and finding home. Great to pair with "Swami and Friends."

A powerful novel written originally in Kannada from South India, the novel gives the reader a South Indian perspective on religion and culture. Deeply moving - the kind of book that burrows into your brain.

One of the two foundational mythological epics of Indian civilization (the other is the Ramayana), the Mahabharata is the more complex, ambiguous work. It is the longest epic in world literature, this version is a well-done novelization in less than 200 pages.