Indian literature boasts a rich legacy, from timeless classics to modern masterpieces. Whether you’re a seasoned book lover or exploring Indian authors for the first time, this list of 200 Indian authors and their notable works is your ultimate guide to discovering the best of Indian writing.

Why Explore Indian Literature?

Indian authors have left an indelible mark on global literature, offering stories that resonate deeply with themes of culture, history, and human connection. This curated list brings together a mix of legendary writers, contemporary voices, and emerging talents across various genres, ensuring something for every reader.

List of Top 200 Indian Authors and Their Books

Arundhati Roy – “The God of Small Things”
Vikram Seth – “A Suitable Boy”
Salman Rushdie – “Midnight’s Children”
Jhumpa Lahiri – “The Namesake”
R.K. Narayan – “Swami and Friends”
Bhavik Sarkhedi – “The Unproposed Guy”
Amish Tripathi – “The Immortals of Meluha”
Ruskin Bond – “The Room on the Roof”
Amitav Ghosh – “The Shadow Lines”
Shashi Tharoor – “The Great Indian Novel”
Rohinton Mistry – “A Fine Balance”
Rabindranath Tagore – “Gitanjali”
Anita Desai – “Clear Light of Day”
Kiran Desai – “The Inheritance of Loss”
Ashwin Sanghi – “The Rozabal Line”
Durjoy Datta – “Of Course I Love You”
Ashok Banker – “Prince of Ayodhya”
Devdutt Pattanaik – “Myth=Mithya”
Vikram Chandra – “Sacred Games”
Preeti Shenoy – “Life is What You Make It”
Ravi Subramanian – “If God was a Banker”
Khushwant Singh – “Train to Pakistan”
Sudha Murthy – “Wise and Otherwise”
Rupi Kaur – “Milk and Honey”
Shobhaa De – “Starry Nights”
Anuja Chauhan – “The Zoya Factor”
Ritu Kumar – “Costumes and Textiles of Royal India”
Vikramaditya Motwane – “Sacred Games”
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay – “Devdas”
Twinkle Khanna – “Mrs Funnybones”
Devaki Jain – “The Brass Notebook”
Manu Joseph – “Serious Men”
Durjoy Datta – “Our Impossible Love”
Anand Neelakantan – “Asura: Tale of the Vanquished”
P.G. Wodehouse – “Thank You, Jeeves”
Khaled Hosseini – “The Kite Runner”
Jeet Thayil – “Narcopolis”
Meena Kandasamy – “When I Hit You”
Shashi Deshpande – “That Long Silence”
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – “The Palace of Illusions”
Jerry Pinto – “Em and the Big Hoom”
Kamala Das – “My Story”
Anand Gandhi – “Tumbbad”
Aravind Adiga – “The White Tiger”
Kiran Nagarkar – “Cuckold”
Manu S. Pillai – “The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore”
Shrabani Basu – “Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant”
Upamanyu Chatterjee – “English, August: An Indian Story”
Tishani Doshi – “Small Days and Nights”
Taran Khan – “Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul”
Namita Gokhale – “Paro: Dreams of Passion”
Jerry Pinto – “Murder in Mahim”
Anuja Chandramouli – “Yama’s Lieutenant”
K.R. Meera – “The Poison of Love”
Arun Shourie – “Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud”
Ramachandra Guha – “India After Gandhi”
Sudha Murthy – “Grandma’s Bag of Stories”
Manreet Sodhi Someshwar – “The Long Walk Home”
Kalki Krishnamurthy – “Sivagamiyin Sapatham”
Pankaj Mishra – “Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India”
Krishna Sobti – “Zindaginama”
Anuja Chauhan – “Battle for Bittora”
Siddhartha Mukherjee – “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”
T.C. Boyle – “The Road to Wellville”
Indira Goswami – “The Shadow of Kamakhya”
Vikram Seth – “Two Lives”
Devdutt Pattanaik – “Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata”
Samit Basu – “The Simoqin Prophecies”
Sujatha Gidla – “Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India”
Nayantara Sahgal – “Rich Like Us”
Salman Rushdie – “Shalimar the Clown”
Vikas Swarup – “Q & A”
Madhulika Liddle – “The Englishman’s Cameo”
Upamanyu Chatterjee – “The Mammaries of the Welfare State”
Rohinton Mistry – “Family Matters”
Khushwant Singh – “The Company of Women”
Ruskin Bond – “The Blue Umbrella”
Anita Nair – “The Better Man”
Kunal Basu – “The Miniaturist”
Indra Sinha – “Animal’s People”
Sarnath Banerjee – “Corridor”
Amit Chaudhuri – “A Strange and Sublime Address”
Manu Joseph – “Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous”
Anuradha Roy – “All the Lives We Never Lived”
Anita Nair – “Mistress”
Anuradha Roy – “The Folded Earth”
Jerry Pinto – “Em and the Big Hoom”
Nayantara Sahgal – “Rich Like Us”
Shobhaa De – “Sethji”
Samit Basu – “The GameWorld Trilogy”
Tabish Khair – “The Thing About Thugs”
Vikram Chandra – “Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software”
Vikram Seth – “Beastly Tales from Here and There”
Arun Kolatkar – “Kala Ghoda Poems”
Amitav Ghosh – “The Calcutta Chromosome”
Manohar Malgonkar – “The Princes”
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – “Pather Panchali”
Nalini Jameela – “The Autobiography of a Sex Worker”
Mahasweta Devi – “Breast Stories”
Vikram Seth – “An Equal Music”
Kiran Nagarkar – “Cuckold”
Aravind Adiga – “The White Tiger”
Chetan Bhagat – “One Night at the Call Center”
Ashwin Sanghi – “The Krishna Key”
Anuja Chauhan – “Those Pricey Thakur Girls”
Amish Tripathi – “The Secret of the Nagas”
Durjoy Datta – “World’s Best Boyfriend”
Ashok Banker – “Ten Kings: Dasarajna”
Ravi Subramanian – “The Bestseller She Wrote”
R.K. Narayan – “The Guide”
Devdutt Pattanaik – “Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana”
Sudha Murthy – “Dollar Bahu”
Preeti Shenoy – “It’s All in the Planets”
Ruskin Bond – “The Cherry Tree”
Rupi Kaur – “The Sun and Her Flowers”
Amitav Ghosh – “Sea of Poppies”
Anita Desai – “Fire on the Mountain”
Shashi Tharoor – “The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone”
Manu Joseph – “The Illicit Happiness of Other People”
Khushwant Singh – “The Company of Women”
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – “Sister of My Heart”
Vikram Seth – “From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet”
Arundhati Roy – “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”
Salman Rushdie – “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”
Jhumpa Lahiri – “Interpreter of Maladies”
R.K. Narayan – “Malgudi Days”
Amish Tripathi – “The Oath of the Vayuputras”
Ruskin Bond – “Rusty, the Boy from the Hills”
Kiran Desai – “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard”
Anita Desai – “In Custody”
Ravi Subramanian – “God is a Gamer”
Ashwin Sanghi – “The Rozabal Line”
Durjoy Datta – “When Only Love Remains”
Ashok Banker – “Mahabharata Series”
Devdutt Pattanaik – “The Pregnant King”
Sudha Murthy – “The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk”
Preeti Shenoy – “A Hundred Little Flames”
Rupi Kaur – “Home Body”
Amitav Ghosh – “River of Smoke”
Shashi Tharoor – “The Paradoxical Prime Minister”
Jeet Thayil – “Narcopolis”
K.R. Meera – “Aarachaar”
Kunal Basu – “The Yellow Emperor’s Cure”
Ritu Kumar – “Costumes and Textiles of Royal India”
Tishani Doshi – “Small Days and Nights”
Taran Khan – “Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul”
Namita Gokhale – “Things to Leave Behind”
Manreet Sodhi Someshwar – “The Radiance of a Thousand Suns”
Manjiri Prabhu – “The Trail of Four”
Anupama Chopra – “Sholay: The Making of a Classic”
Varun Agarwal – “How I Braved Anu Aunty & Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company”
Keki N. Daruwalla – “For Pepper and Christ”
Vani Mahesh – “The Odd Book of Cows”
Manjiri Prabhu – “The Cosmic Clues”
Ameen Merchant – “The Silent Raga”
Mahesh Rao – “Polite Society”
Anand Neelakantan – “The Rise of Sivagami”
Jerry Pinto – “Murder in Mahim”
Anees Salim – “Vanity Bagh”
Paro Anand – “No Guns at My Son’s Funeral”
Abir Mukherjee – “A Rising Man”
Nandita Das – “Manto & I”
Sharanya Manivannan – “The High Priestess Never Marries”
Upamanyu Chatterjee – “Fairy Tales at Fifty”
Sujatha Gidla – “Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India”
Perumal Murugan – “One Part Woman”
Arundhathi Subramaniam – “When God is a Traveller”
Anuja Chauhan – “The House That BJ Built”
Parvati Sharma – “The Dead Camel and Other Stories of Love”
Tabish Khair – “Just Another Jihadi Jane”
Roopa Pai – “Taranauts: The Secret of the Sparklites”
Anees Salim – “The Blind Lady’s Descendants”
Deepti Kapoor – “A Bad Character”
Nandini Krishnan – “Hitched: The Modern Woman and Arranged Marriage”
Roshan Ali – “Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction”
Sharanya Manivannan – “The Queen of Jasmine Country”
Anita Nair – “Idris: Keeper of the Light”
Shylashri Shankar – “Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes”
Roshan Ali – “Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction”
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli – “The Sentimental Terrorist and Other Tales”
Madhuri Vijay – “The Far Field”
Manu Joseph – “Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous”
Amitabha Bagchi – “Half the Night is Gone”
Aravind Adiga – “Selection Day”
Rohinton Mistry – “Such a Long Journey”
Kiran Desai – “The Inheritance of Loss”
Sudha Murthy – “The Magic Drum and Other Favourite Stories”
Ravi Subramanian – “The Bestseller She Wrote”
Ruskin Bond – “The Blue Umbrella”
Chetan Bhagat – “2 States: The Story of My Marriage”
Anuja Chauhan – “Those Pricey Thakur Girls”
Ashwin Sanghi – “Chanakya’s Chant”
Durjoy Datta – “If It’s Not Forever, It’s Not Love”
Ashok Banker – “Prince of Ayodhya”
Devdutt Pattanaik – “Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana”
Preeti Shenoy – “The One You Cannot Have”
Rupi Kaur – “Milk and Honey”
Amitav Ghosh – “The Hungry Tide”
Shashi Tharoor – “The Great Indian Novel”
Vikram Seth – “The Golden Gate”

There…. You have it. Now go enjoy!

Highlighted Recommendations

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices, here are five must-read works to get started:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga: A gripping tale of ambition and survival in modern India.
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh: A moving account of the partition of India.
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: A feminist retelling of the Mahabharata.
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: One of the longest novels ever published, exploring post-independence India.
Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan: A nostalgic look at childhood in pre-independence India.

How to Use This List

For Beginners: Start with modern classics like The God of Small Things or The White Tiger.
Genre Enthusiasts: Explore categories like mythological fiction or poetry.
Yearly Reading Challenge: Use the list to create a plan for reading 20 books per year.