100 Books Like A Patchwork Family

I am always looking out for talented young writers and this debut really struck me for its narrator’s very distinctive voice, both stylish and sad. An Indian Catcher in the Rye but with a protagonist more hampered by family and circumstances, capable of greater angst, and looking for authenticity in the strangest and loneliest of places. 

A most affecting historical novel set in 19th century Assam as the British colonialists sought to push deeper into the country. I’ve read so many accounts of the early encounters between native and foreigner but what makes this one rare is Blackburn’s careful and tender individualising of his characters so that they can both be ranged against each other and yet in some human and mysterious and ultimately tragic way also be friends. 

This is a marvellous novel about an area in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas that is not far from where I grew up. It’s a story about people and nature, how the relationship is at once very elemental for those who live off the land, as well as very convoluted and destructive because it’s driven by greed, politics, and fear. The narrator is a visitor to the region, looking to solve a mystery from his past, and this device of the curious outsider looking in works really well to make the whole place come to life. 

This slim novel I read in one sitting not because, in the way of conventional thrillers, one hopes for a decent resolution, but because the story is so devastating. Its very hopelessness somehow pulls one in. Pandey has written a very gentle account of the very brutal forces ranged against one couple who have committed what can be a crime in modern India – marrying outside one’s caste and religion. 

This is a small book. But in its own way, it is rich and detailed when it comes to how profoundly it draws out the relationship between the forest and the Kadars, an indigenous community residing in South India. The authors visiting the forest are researchers from the city, but here in the forest their teachers are the Kadars whose very name means “people of the forest.” With a touch of humour the book, wonderfully illustrated, is an ode to the traditional ecological knowledge, powers of observation, and story-telling skills of the Kadars. The simple activity of walking on a forest path with the Kadars is a revelation of the wealth of knowledge they possess and their relationship with the plants, animals, and even spirits. This is knowledge no ecological textbook can provide, but this knowledge is immeasurable in its value.

Not all the struggles of Asians are with Western societies. There are also divisions and rivalries within Asia, including, sadly, between the two Asian giants: India and China. Kanti Bajpai’s book explains the complex, neurotic relationship between the two Asian powers well. Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh once wisely observed, “The world is large enough to accommodate the growth ambitions of both India and China.”

A decade after he said that China and India clashed again in the Himalayas in June 2020, plunging relations to a new low. The Asian century will be seriously crippled if China and India don’t find a long-term modus vivendi. Bajpai’s book will help both sides understand each other better. 

How would you deal with surviving a disastrous flood that swallows your childhood home? Krupa Ge does this by channeling her rage and anguish into a book. Writing about the devastating floods that hit her hometown Chennai, in southern India, in 2015, she deftly weaves her own experience of being stranded in the flood, worrying about her family, into the larger narrative of state apathy and culpability. At the core, this is a book about environmental injustice. The poorest in the city were the worst affected, losing family and all their possessions. And yet it was also the poor who showed extraordinary resilience and compassion: the fishermen who rescued stranded and recovered bodies or sanitation workers themselves affected but who turned up to clean the city.

Through meticulous research, the book unravels the causes of this man-made disaster, mincing no words in holding the state responsible for what it was… show more.

There is no better book for understanding India’s family businesses in a broader social and political context than this sprawling, powerful novel. Preti Taneja retells and reworks Shakespeare’s King Lear as three sisters (and an illegitimate son) fight over the inheritance of a massive company that makes everything from textiles to cars (echoes of the Tatas, Birlas, and Ambanis, but also of the East India Company as the subcontinent’s original corporate sovereign). Taneja touches on all the big issues, including gender, caste, climate, and Kashmir, without ever being preachy. It is a long and sometimes challenging read, but always rewarding. I may be biased given the subject matter, but this is the century’s Great Indian Novel—a worthy successor to the likes of Midnight’s Children, A Suitable Boy, and Sacred Games. 

Ruskin Bond is known more for his simple stories about everyday people in the Himalayan foothills (like a North Indian R.K. Narayan). He does throw in the odd story, which seems like a folktale with a surprising ending like A Face in the Night and The Eyes Have It. This livens up the collection more, as you don’t know when you will get one of the unexpected plot twists.

His books ooze with his love for his adopted country, and he writes with such tenderness about young characters that they are wholesome and fulfilling to read.

What I love most about him is that he is one of the most approachable and friendly authors. He spends hours sitting in his hometown’s main bookshop talking with readers and autographing their purchases. 

A dark story about a corrupt man, An Obedient Father unfolds in a closely observed world. From page one: “It was morning. The sky was blue from edge to edge. I had just bathed and was on my balcony hanging a towel over the ledge. The May heat was so intense that as soon as I stepped out of the flat, worms of sweat appeared on my bald scalp.” The close sensory detail makes a dark story shockingly intimate.