There have always been talented writers making waves in India’s literary scene in every decade, but never as many as today’s crop of young and multi-talented authors. Most of them are highly educated and well-qualified professionals like bankers, engineers and university professors. They pursue their passion for writing while juggling serious careers and families, and yet manage to produce multiple bestselling novels. Here are five of the hottest authors:
Chetan Bhagat
Leading the wave of literary revolution in India is the popular banker-turned-author, Chetan Bhagat. He is currently one of India’s most successful authors, and has been called as ‘the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history’ by the New York Times. Over the past decade, he has published seven novels, and all of them have become bestsellers. Several of them were also adapted into highly successful Bollywood movies. Besides writing novels, Bhagat is also a columnist for leading national newspapers and has tried his hand at screenwriting as well, with a recent Bollywood blockbuster movie. What has set Bhagat apart from other writers, and made him a youth icon and a household name, is his down-to-earth and natural writing style. Readers of all ages and walks of life can connect with his easy, informal books depicting normal, middle-class Indian lives.
Here is the list of his books to check out: Five Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Center, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, 2 States, Revolution 2020, What Young India Wants and his latest release, Half Girlfriend.
Amish Tripathi
Amish Tripathi is another young author who gave up his career as an investment banker to take up writing full time. Tripathi bravely ventured where other Indian authors writing in English would hesitate to enter; into religious/mythology based stories with gripping drama and powerful characters. The numerous publishers who rejected his first book due to the religious content are probably ruing their error in judgment now, as his Shiva Trilogy of books has become wildly successful. The recent third installment, The Oath of Vayuputras, looks like it might become one of the biggest all-time bestsellers by an Indian author. The Immortals of Melluha and The Secret of the Nagas are the two earlier books in the series.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee is an Indian-American poet, novelist, and professor. With a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, Chitra Banerjee went on to become a professor at the University of Houston. While teaching, she began her writing career with poems, and moved on to several bestselling novels. A wonderfully gifted writer, she has received numerous awards for her novels and poetry. Some of her books are: Palace of Illusion, Mistress of Spice, Arranged Marriage, Queen of Dreams, One Amazing Thing, and Oleander Girl, among others.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Another Indian-American author, Jhumpa Lahiri is an extremely talented writer whose debut book (Interpreter of Maladies) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has also won the prestigious O. Henry Award, and the Hemingway Award. Her widely acclaimed second novel (The Namesake) was made into a popular Bollywood movie. All her books became popular bestsellers in India and overseas. Her recent novel, The Lowland, was nominated for the Man Booker prize last year. Besides being a popular author, Lahiri also taught university level creative writing classes. She has 3 postgraduate degrees as well as a doctorate degree.
Ashwin Sanghi
Ashwin Sanghi is a businessman with an MBA from Yale, who has managed to publish three bestselling thrillers (Chanakya’s Chant, The Rozabal Line and The Krishna Key) while writing on the side. He is being called the ‘Dan Brown of India’ with his gripping thrillers. He has recently collaborated with the world’s leading author of thrillers- James Patterson- and co-authored an India based thriller, Private India.
There are more than just a handful of talented Indian authors now who are penning down some great bestselling books in English. A few of the other popular Indian authors of today are: Rashmi Bansal (Stay Hungry Stay Foolish and Connect the Dots), Ravi Subramanian (If God Was a Banker and I Bought the Monk’s Ferrari), Preeti Shenoy (Life is What You Make It and The One You Cannot Have), Krishan Partap Singh (The War Ministry, Young Turks and Delhi Durbar), Aravinda Adiga, Amitav Ghosh, Durjoy Dutta and Anand Neelakantan, just to name a few.
Image credit: Kevin Dooley on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/CS_Rajan.jpg [/author_image] [author_info]CS Rajan is a freelance writer who loves to write on various topics, and is currently working on her first novel. [/author_info] [/author]