20 Harper Perennial Gems for the #Lockdown!

Haven’t you always wished you knew 3-4 languages just so you could read more? Well, we have you covered.

The Harper Perennial collection brings stories from various Indian languages to English, allowing you to read more. The most striking feature of these editions is their unique and uniform cover design.

Make the most of the lockdown and READ more!

1. The Liberation of Sita — Volga, tr. T. Vijay Kumar & C. Vijayasree 

A powerful subversion of India’s most popular tale of morality, choice and sacrifice, The Liberation of Sita opens up new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to review their lives and experiences afresh. This is Volga at her feminist best. Get e-book.

2. Ghachar Ghochar — Vivek Shanbhag, tr. Srinath Perur 

Masterfully translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur, Ghachar Ghochar is a suspenseful, playful and ultimately menacing story about the shifting consequences of success. Get e-book.

3. A Life Misspent — Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, tr. Satti Khanna 

Set in pre-Independence India, A Life Misspent is as much the account of an unlikely friendship as it is a coming-of-age story. A memoir on the making of one of the greatest poets of all time. Get e-book.

4. Bhima: Lone Warrior — M.T. Vasudevan Nair, tr. Gita Krishnankutty 

This is the story of Bhima, the second son, always second in line – a story never adequately told until one of India’s finest writers conjured him up from the silences in Vyasa’s narrative. Get e-book.

5. Chemmeen — Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, tr. Anita Nair

First published in 1956, Chemmeen tells the story of the relationship between Karutthamma, a Hindu woman from the fishing community, and Pareekkutty, the son of a Muslim fish wholesaler. This hugely successful novel was adapted into a film of the same name, and won critical acclaim and commercial success. Anita Nair’s evocative translation brings this classic of Indian literature to a new generation that hasn’t had the opportunity to savour this tale of love and longing. Get e-book.

6. Hindutva or Hind Swaraj — U.R. Ananthamurthy, tr. Keerti Ramachandra & Vivek Shanbhag 

Juxtaposing V.D. Savarkar’s idea of Hindutva with M.K. Gandhi’s concept of Hind Swaraj, the book examines the two directions that were open to India at the time of Independence. Get e-book.

7. Wild Words: Four Tamil Poets — Malathi Maitri, Salma, Kutti Revathi, Sukirtharani, tr. Lakshmi Holmstrom 

This anthology celebrates the poetry of the four poets through Lakshmi Holmstrom’s English translation. Get e-book.

8. Selected Poems — Joy Goswami, tr. Sampurna Chattarji 

This collection brings together, for the first time, poetry from three strikingly different phases of Joy Goswami’s formidable literary career – Surjo-Pora Chhai (Ashes, Burnt by the Sun, 1999), Moutat Moheshwar (Shiva, My High, 2005) and Du Dondo Phowara Matro (Merely a Spurt of Time, 2011). Selected and translated by Sampurna Chatterji, this book, which includes an in-depth interview with the poet, introduces the English reader to the world of a poet whose language is powerful, inventive and often enigmatic.  Get e-book.

9. Wild Animals Prohibited — Subimal Misra, tr. V. Ramaswam 

Audacious experimentalist and self-declared anti-writer, Subimal Misra is the master of contemporary alternative Bengali literature and anti-establishment writing. This collection brings together twenty-five stories that record the dark history of violence and degeneration in the Bengal of the seventies and eighties. Get e-book.

10. A Life Incomplete – Nanak Singh tr. Navdeep Suri 

Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author Nanak Singh draws on personal experiences to create this compelling portrait of Punjab in the 1920s. Originally published in Punjabi in 1940, Adh Kidhiya Phool is an intense meditation on the choices people make and the consequences these may have. Get e-book.

11. A Preface to Man – Subhash Chandran tr. Fathima E.V.

Grappling with issues of equality, love, caste, religion and politics, Thachanakkara is a microcosm of twentieth-century Kerala. Told through the history of three generations of a feudal Nair family, this sprawling story is reminiscent of the craft of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and has the scale of Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days. Manushyanu Oru Amukham is an artistic meditation on human existence and is a contemporary classic. Get e-book.

12. Age of Frenzy – Mahabaleshwar Sail tr. Vidya Pai 

Recounting a forgotten history, Mahabaleshwar Sail’s epic novel, Age of Frenzy, documents a turbulent past of religious rifts, caste hierarchies and power shifts which changed the ethos of a significant part of the western coastline of India forever. Get e-book.

13. Mohanaswamy –Vasudhendra tr. Rashmi Terdal

A coming out of the closet for Vasudhendra himself, these stories of homosexual love and lives jolted Kannada readers out of their notions of the literary and the palatable. The gritty narratives of Mohanaswamy explore sexuality, urbanisation and class with a nuance and an unflinching honesty that will both unnerve and move readers in English, and serve as a fine introduction to one of the strongest voices in Kannada literature. Get e-book. 

14. No Presents Please – Jayant Kaikini Tr. Tejaswini Niranjana 

Winner: DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019. From Irani cafes to chawls, old cinema houses to reform homes, Jayant Kaikini seeks out and illuminates moments of existential anxiety and of tenderness. In these sixteen stories, gaps in the curtains of the ordinary open up to possibilities that might not have existed, but for this city where the surreal meets the everyday. Get e-book. 

15. The Secret Garland – Andal’s Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli 

The Secret Garland aims to capture the lyricism, beauty and power of the original poems. Archana Venkatesan’s detailed notes, based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the two poems contextualize the significance and influence of Andal’s continuing legacy. An essential addition to the classical library. Get e-book.

16. Shala – Milind Bokil tr. Vikrant Pande 

Set in a small Maharashtrian town during the Emergency of 1975, Shala is a heart-warming, nuanced novel about the adolescent struggles that are as tortuous in real time as they are amusing in retrospect. Get e-book.

17. The Music of Solitude – Krishna Sobti tr. Vasudha Dalmia 

Krishna Sobti’s Samay Sargam is a novel about sharing solitudes and growing old in a city that is at once keenly private and aggressively collective. This is as much a portrait of the changing times as it the story of a beautiful romance that thrives on companionship. Get the e-book.

18. The Weary Generation – Abdullah Hussein

Published in 1963, before Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Abdullah Hussein’s Udaas Naslein was an instant bestseller. Now beyond its fortieth edition, it has never been out of print. Hussein leads us into a story of love and marriage between two people from starkly different social backgrounds, which also mirrors the uneasy ‘marriage’ between the British and their empire – both ultimately ending in estrangement. Get the e-book. 

19. Written in Tears – Arupa Patangia Kalita, tr. Ranjita Biswas 

A bold and sensitive witness to her times, Arupa Patangia Kalita is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Assamese literature. Written in Tears brings together some of her best novellas and stories set against a surreally beautiful landscape torn and scarred by conflict. This is a mighty chronicle of the disturbing and searing history of aggression and hate that has plagued Assam for decades. Get the e-book.

20. The Sea Lies Ahead – Intizar Hussain and Rakhshanda Jalil

The Sea Lies Ahead takes up the story of Pakistan where the first novel Basti (1979) ended: poised on the verge of breaking off from its eastern arm. This is a novel about those muhajirs, the author himself among them, who went to the promised Land of the Pure and were met with mistrust, prejudice and apathy. Equally, it is a rich portrait of the new culture of urban Pakistan fostered by people who came from the countless towns and hamlets in and around Lucknow, Meerut and Delhi. Bringing alive unforgettable characters with its sparkling prose, this novel is a powerful exploration of Islamic history and the story of Pakistan’s great disillusionment. Get the e-book.