Indian writers every reader should know

India writes in more than twenty major languages, and its literature is too vast for any single list. This guide is a starting point: writers whose work has shaped how Indians see themselves, and who are rewarding to read today.

The poets

Mirza Ghalib, writing in nineteenth-century Delhi, is the most celebrated poet in Urdu; his ghazals are quoted across South Asia. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 and wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s Madhushala made Hindi poetry hugely popular, and Amrita Pritam’s lament for Punjab after Partition is still recited on both sides of the border. Kamala Das wrote frank, confessional poetry in English and stories in Malayalam.

The storytellers

Premchand is regarded as the father of modern Hindi and Urdu fiction; his novel Godaan and his stories of village life remain staples of school reading. R. K. Narayan created the fictional town of Malgudi, and Ruskin Bond has written about the hills of Mussoorie for more than seventy years.

Voices of the marginalised

Mahasweta Devi wrote fierce Bengali fiction about tribal people and the poor and spent decades as an activist for them. Her novel Hajar Churashir Maa (Mother of 1084) is a classic of protest literature.

The modern Indian novel in English

Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, set in the 1950s, is one of the longest and most loved novels in English. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997. Amitav Ghosh has written sweeping historical novels about the Indian Ocean world and became the first English-language writer to win the Jnanpith Award. Chetan Bhagat reached millions of new readers with simple, fast-moving novels, several of which became films.

Words and music

Gulzar bridges literature and cinema: a celebrated poet, he has also written song lyrics for more than six decades and won the Jnanpith Award.

Where to start

New readers might begin with a Malgudi story by R. K. Narayan, a few of Premchand’s short stories, or Tagore’s poems in translation, before moving on to longer novels such as A Suitable Boy or The God of Small Things.