# The 14 Best Indian Novels in English

> Booker winners share the field with Bombay satires and quiet family novels, set anywhere from Kerala backwaters to Himalayan hill towns. Each one was written in English by an author with Indian roots.

*By YPB Team · Published October 30, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-14-best-indian-novels-in-english*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Midnight's Children** — score 1000/1000
   Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker winner about Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of India's independence and bound to the nation's fate.
2. **The God of Small Things** — score 653/1000
   Arundhati Roy's 1997 Booker-winning debut about twins Estha and Rahel and the forbidden love that breaks a Kerala family.
3. **The Inheritance of Loss** — score 502/1000
   Kiran Desai's 2006 Booker winner set between a Himalayan town near Kalimpong and the kitchens of New York.
4. **Em and the Big Hoom** — score 435/1000
   Jerry Pinto's 2012 Bombay novel about a son and the mother whose mental illness shapes the whole family.
5. **Serious Men** — score 435/1000
   Manu Joseph's 2010 Mumbai satire about a Dalit research assistant who passes his son off as a genius.
6. **The Guide** — score 356/1000
   R. K. Narayan's 1958 novel about Raju, a Malgudi tourist guide who is mistaken for a holy man.
7. **The Shadow Lines** — score 356/1000
   Amitav Ghosh's 1988 novel moving between Calcutta, Dhaka and London across two generations of one family.
8. **Sea of Poppies** — score 261/1000
   Amitav Ghosh's 2008 opening of the Ibis trilogy, gathering a ship of indentured migrants on the eve of the Opium Wars.
9. **The White Tiger** — score 261/1000
   Aravind Adiga's 2008 Booker winner, narrated by driver Balram Halwai as he climbs out of servitude in modern India.
10. **The Great Indian Novel** — score 261/1000
   Shashi Tharoor's 1989 satire that retells the Mahabharata as the story of India's independence movement.
11. **A Suitable Boy** — score 261/1000
   Vikram Seth's 1993 doorstopper set in 1950s north India, following Rupa Mehra's search for a suitable husband for her daughter Lata.
12. **A Fine Balance** — score 261/1000
   Rohinton Mistry's 1995 novel about four strangers sharing a cramped Bombay flat during the Emergency.
13. **Burnt Sugar** — score 261/1000
   Avni Doshi's Booker-shortlisted debut about a Pune daughter caring for the mother who once neglected her.
14. **The Ministry of Utmost Happiness** — score 261/1000
   Arundhati Roy's 2017 second novel, centred on Anjum, a hijra who builds a guest house in a Delhi graveyard.

Tags: books, india, fiction