The “Booker Prize”, also formerly known as the “Booker Prize for Fiction”, and the “Man Booker Prize”, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English for books published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
There is a five-person panel of authors, librarians, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book.
This article will discuss the books of Indian authors that won the Booker Prize or the International Booker Prize and also other works of those authors. We will also include authors who are of Indian origin and have won the Booker Prize, so we are celebrating their books too.
#1 An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy
About the book
Title: An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: South End
Pages: 200
Goodreads Rating: 4/5
Guide to Empire offers us sharp theoretical tools for understanding the New American Empire—a dangerous paradigm, Roy argues here, that is entirely distinct from the imperialism of the British or even the New World Order of George Bush, the elder.
She examines how resistance movements build power, using examples of nonviolent organising in South Africa, India, and the United States. Deftly drawing the thread through ostensibly disconnected issues and arenas, Roy pays particular attention to the parallels between globalisation in India, the devastation in Iraq, and the deplorable conditions many African Americans, in particular, must still confront.
Why do we recommend this book?
This book may not be able to relax from the Sisyphean task of stopping the U.S. juggernaut, but at least we are assured that Roy’s hard-edged brilliance fortifies the struggle for global justice.
To buy An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy now:
#2 Amnesty by Aravind Adiga
About the book
Title: Amnesty
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 268
Goodreads Rating: 3.30/5
Amnesty is about Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after fleeing Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself for three years. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life.
Why do we recommend this book?
This one of the multiple books by Adiga in this Booker Prize list. You should read this for Adiga’s signature wit and magic. Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.
To buy Amnesty by Aravind Adiga now:
#3 Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
About the book
Title: Between the Assassinations
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 281
Goodreads Rating: 3.37/5
Welcome to Kittur, India. It’s on India’s southwestern coast, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Kaliamma River to the south and east. It’s blessed with rich soil and scenic beauty, and it’s been around for centuries. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste.
And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and the prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed. A twelve-year-old boy named Ziauddin, a gofer at a tea shop near the railway station is enticed into wrongdoing because a fair-skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth.
Why do we recommend this book?
Between the Assassinations, with all the humor, sympathy, and unflinching honesty, enlarges our understanding of the world we live in today.
To buy Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga now:
#4 Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai
About the book
Title: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Author: Kiran Desai
Publisher: Anchor
Pages: 224
Goodreads Rating: 3.46/5
Sampath Chawla was born in a drought that ended with a vengeance on the night of his birth. All signs being auspicious, the villagers assured Sampath’s proud parents that their son was destined for greatness. Twenty years of failure later, that unfortunately does not appear to be the case.
A sullen government worker, Sampath is inspired only when searching for a quiet place to take his nap. “But the world is round,” his grandmother says, “Wait and see. Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will come up to the other side. Yes, on top of the world. He is just taking a longer route.” No one believes her until, one day, Sampath climbs into a guava tree and becomes unintentionally famous as a holy man, setting off a series of events that spin increasingly out of control.
Why do we recommend this book?
A delightfully sweet comic novel ending in a raucous bang, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is as surprising and entertaining as beautifully wrought.
To buy Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai now:
#5 In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
About the book
Title: In a Free State
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 247
Goodreads Rating: 3.49/5
In the beginning, it is just a car trip through Africa. Two English people—Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious compound wife—are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital.
But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin’s Uganda. And the farther Naipaul’s protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.
Why do we recommend this book?
With multiple books of his in this list, In A Free State is Booker Prize-winning author Naipaul at his best. You will find it funny and terrifying, sorrowful and unsparing.
To buy In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul now:
#6 India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul
About the book
Title: India: A Million Mutinies Now
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 480
Goodreads Rating: 3.93/5
Naipaul, of Indian heritage, was born and raised in Trinidad, but he recognised that his ancestral culture governed who he was and how he thought. In this passionate portrait of a culture, a society, and a country, he returns to India, a nation in turmoil. In trying to understand India, Naipaul has helped us see more clearly what is an increasingly shattered society, yet one that manages to soldier on despite everything.
Why do we recommend this book?
These travelogues are about people, not geography, that sometimes feel like reading historical fiction. Such is the story of modern India, but also many other emerging countries around the world.
To buy India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipaul now:
#7 Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga
About the book
Title: Last Man in Tower
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Pages: 422
Goodreads Rating: 3.56/5
This is a tale of one man refusing to leave his home in the face of property development. Tower A is a relic from a cooperative housing society established in the 1950s. When a property developer offers to buy out the residents for eye-watering sums, the principled yet arrogant teacher is the only one to refuse the offer, determined not to surrender his sentimental attachment to his home and his right to live in it in the name of greed.
His neighbours gradually relinquish any similar qualms they might have and, in a typically blunt satirical premise, take matters into their own hands, determined to seize their slice of the new Mumbai as it transforms from stinky slum to silvery skyscrapers at dizzying, almost gravity-defying speed.
Why do we recommend this book?
In this well-written story, Adiga explores the real estate trade concerns in a big, bustling city and how vulnerable middle-class people are to the systems in such cities.
To buy Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga now:
#8 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
About the book
Title: Midnight’s Children
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Vintage Books
Pages: 647
Goodreads Rating: 3.98/5
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.
Why do we recommend this book?
Midnight’s Children might be an overblown, unsubtle metaphor for India, but it is also a celebration of diversity in a universal context. There is no wonder that this book won the Booker Prize (1981), the Booker of Bookers Prize (1993), and The Best of the Booker Prize (2008).
To buy Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie now:
#9 Public Power in the Age of Empire by Arundhati Roy
About the book
Title: Public Power in the Age of Empire
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Pages: 64
Goodreads Rating: 4.22/5
In Public Power in the Age of Empire, writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly examines the limits to Democracy in the world today. Bringing the same care to her prose that she brought to her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, Roy discusses the need for social movements to contest the occupation of Iraq and the reduction of “democracy” to elections with no meaningful alternatives allowed. She explores the dangers of the “NGO-isation of resistance,” shows how governments that block nonviolent dissent encourage terrorism and examines the role of the corporate media in marginalising oppositional voices.
Why do we recommend this book?
It is a manifesto-like text that denounces violence while condemning neoliberalism, where her arguments are characterised by economic colonialism and the repression of resistance.
To buy Public Power in the Age of Empire by Arundhati Roy now:
#10 Selection Day by Aravind Adiga, Sartaj Garewal (Narrator)
About the book
Title: Selection Day
Author: Aravind Adiga, Sartaj Garewal (Narrator)
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Pages: 320
Goodreads Rating: 3.23/5
Manju is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket—if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented brother, and is fascinated by CSI and curious about scientific facts. But there are many things about himself and the world that he doesn’t know.
Everyone around him, it seems, has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. But when Manju begins to get to know Radha’s great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju’s world begins to change, and he is faced with decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and the world around him.
Why do we recommend this book?
There’s beauty in cricket, which we Indians understand deeply. Even though our national game is hockey, we know that we live and breathe cricket. And Aravind Adiga’s novel Selection Day is only centred around this passionate sport. A mix of beating class hierarchy, rags to riches dreams, jealousies, and parental pressure, Selection Day makes up for a brilliant read—no wonder so many of this Booker Prize-winning author’s books have made it into this list.
To buy Selection Day by Aravind Adiga now:
#11 Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
About the book
Title: Shalimar the Clown
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Random House Trade
Pages: 398
Goodreads Rating: 3.90/5
This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world; his Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown; Max’s illegitimate daughter India; and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all.
It is an epic narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, France, England, and back to California again. Along the way, there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons and legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous.
Why do we recommend this book?
The tones of the novel vary greatly, although the story becomes increasingly desperate as Kashmir is torn apart by conflict and Shalimar is possessed by hatred. The author seems ambivalent towards the main characters, challenging the reader to judge or sympathise with themselves. I recommend this book for its sheer scope, humanity, and power of description.
To buy Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie now:
#12 Shame by Salman Rushdie
About the book
Title: Shame
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 287
Goodreads Rating: 3.86/5
The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie’s phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is “not quite Pakistan.” In this dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men—one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure.
Why do we recommend this book?
Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world between honour and humiliation—”shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.” Shame is an astonishing story that grows more timely by the day.
To buy Shame by Salman Rushdie now:
#13 The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
About the book
Title: The Cost of Living
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Modern Library
Pages: 144
Goodreads Rating: 4.06/5
Arundhati Roy turned a compassionate but unrelenting eye on one family in India. Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fierce humanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spirited polemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India’s progress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul this sprawling subcontinent into the modern age—but which instead have displaced untold millions—and the detonation of India’s first nuclear bomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains.
Why do we recommend this book?
Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperity to show the hidden costs. For those who have been mesmerised by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire, of its topsy-turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificed for the comforts of the few.
To buy The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy now:
#14 The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
About the book
Title: The God of Small Things
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 321
Goodreads Rating: 3.95/5
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist’s moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). The brilliantly plotted story uncoils an unbearable sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
Why do we recommend this book?
The God of Small Things takes on the Big Theme—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book anchored to anguish but fueled by wit and magic.
To buy The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy now:
#15 The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
About the book
Title: The Golden House
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 380
Goodreads Rating: 3.67/5
On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighbourhood is within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family.
Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and the unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons: agoraphobic, alcoholic Petya, a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind; Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous, famous on twenty blocks; and D, at twenty-two the baby of the family, harbouring an explosive secret even from himself. There is no mother, no wife, until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian ex-pat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king—a queen in want of an heir.
Why do we recommend this book?
The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age.
To buy The Golden House by Salman Rushdie now:
#16 The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai
About the book
Title: The Inheritance of Loss
Author: Kiran Desai
Publisher: Grove Press
Pages: 357
Goodreads Rating: 3.45/5
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another.
Kiran Desai’s brilliant novel, published to huge acclaim, is a story of joy and despair. Her characters face numerous choices that majestically illuminate the consequences of colonialism as it collides with the modern world.
Why do we recommend this book?
This is a magnificent book and highly recommended; winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.
To buy The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai now:
#17 The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga
About the book
Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Grove Press
Pages: 276
Goodreads Rating: 3.76/5
The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator this millennium has yet seen.
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Throughout seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his wits to help him along.
Why do we recommend this book?
The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. It provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalised world as told through a retrospective narration from Balram Halwai, a village boy.
To buy The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga now:
#18 Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
Geetanjali Shree
About the book
Title: Tomb of Sand
Author: Geetanjali Shree, Daisy Rockwell (Translator)
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
Pages: 739
Goodreads Rating: 3.85/5
Winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize, this book is about an eighty-year-old woman who slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband and then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention—including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman—that confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more “modern” of the two. At the older woman’s insistence, they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, and a feminist.
Why do we recommend this book?
Geetanjali Shree’s playful tone and exuberant wordplay result in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, simultaneously being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.
To buy Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree now:
#19 Victory City by Salman Rushdie
About the book
Title: Victory City
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 352
Goodreads Rating: 4.36/5
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries—from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.
In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—Victory City—the wonder of the world.
Why do we recommend this book?
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this saga of love, adventure, and myth is a testament to storytelling’s power.
To buy Victory City by Salman Rushdie now:
#20 War Talk by Arundhati Roy
About the book
Title: War Talk
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: South End Press
Pages: 140
Goodreads Rating: 4.11/5
War Talk collects new essays by this prolific writer. Her work highlights the global rise of religious and racial violence. From the horrific pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat, India, to U.S. demands for a war on Iraq, Roy confronts the call to militarism. Desperately working against the backdrop of the nuclear recklessness between her homeland and Pakistan, she calls the equation of nation and ethnicity into question. And throughout her essays, Roy interrogates her roles as a “writer” and “activist.” The eloquence, passion, and political insight of Roy’s political essays have added legions of readers to those already familiar with her Booker Prize-winning novel.
Why do we recommend this book?
Roy addresses issues of democracy and dissent, racism and empire, and war and peace in this collection of new essays.
To buy War Talk by Arundhati Roy now:
All the books we mentioned are written by authors who made their name in the field of literature, and through their work, they also won the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize, making their claim and presence in the literary world strong. I hope you will enjoy reading their work and keep reading more.
Concluding, here are our twenty favourite books by Booker Prize-winning Indian authors you should read now:
| 1 | An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy | Buy now |
| 2 | Amnesty by Aravind Adiga | Buy now |
| 3 | Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga | Buy now |
| 4 | Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai | Buy now |
| 5 | In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul | Buy now |
| 6 | India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipaul | Buy now |
| 7 | Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga | Buy now |
| 8 | Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie | Buy now |
| 9 | Public Power in the Age of Empire by Arundhati Roy | Buy now |
| 10 | Selection Day by Aravind Adiga, Sartaj Garewal (Narrator) | Buy now |
| 11 | Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie | Buy now |
| 12 | Shame by Salman Rushdie | Buy now |
| 13 | The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy | Buy now |
| 14 | The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy | Buy now |
| 15 | The Golden House by Salman Rushdie | Buy now |
| 16 | The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai | Buy now |
| 17 | The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga | Buy now |
| 18 | Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree | Buy now |
| 19 | Victory City by Salman Rushdie | Buy now |
| 20 | War Talk by Arundhati Roy | Buy now |
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Have you read any of the mentioned books that won the Booker Prize? Did we leave out any other books that also won the Booker Prize? Leave a comment below. We would love to know your favourite Booker Prize-winning books by Indian authors!
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