Avtar Singh's All-Time Favourite Reads
Founding editor-in-chief of Time Out Delhi and former managing editor of The Indian Quarterly, Avtar Singh is the author of Necropolis and The Beauty of These Present Things. His non-fiction writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, and India Today. His latest, Into The Forest: A Novel (Context), released in July 2024.
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West By Cormac McCarthy, Vintage
Hands down the best book by a legendary author who can’t be bothered to punctuate (or translate). It is unrelenting in its examination of the evil at the heart of humanity, and its determination to detonate the American ideal of Manifest Destiny.
The Butcher’s Wife By Li Ang, Peter Owen Publishers, Translated from Chinese,
This book is one I’d recommend reading. A young woman is married to a brute of a man; it ends as you might think it will. The matter-of-fact delivery of her circumstances transports you to the inevitable trainwreck in just as much of a mess as what you’re watching unfold.
The Shipping News By Annie Proulx, Fourth Estate
Raucous, funny, human and full of craft. One of the superpowers of good writing is opening windows into the lives of people you’ll never meet otherwise. This book, set in Newfoundland, Canada, delivers that insight, and it entertains. Watch for the passage of a woman delivering a joke about an outsized timepiece.
Netherland By Joseph O’Neill, Harper Perennial,
New York City in the aftermath of 9/11; a family in breakdown; C...
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West By Cormac McCarthy, Vintage
Hands down the best book by a legendary author who can’t be bothered to punctuate (or translate). It is unrelenting in its examination of the evil at the heart of humanity, and its determination to detonate the American ideal of Manifest Destiny.
The Butcher’s Wife By Li Ang, Peter Owen Publishers, Translated from Chinese,
This book is one I’d recommend reading. A young woman is married to a brute of a man; it ends as you might think it will. The matter-of-fact delivery of her circumstances transports you to the inevitable trainwreck in just as much of a mess as what you’re watching unfold.
The Shipping News By Annie Proulx, Fourth Estate
Raucous, funny, human and full of craft. One of the superpowers of good writing is opening windows into the lives of people you’ll never meet otherwise. This book, set in Newfoundland, Canada, delivers that insight, and it entertains. Watch for the passage of a woman delivering a joke about an outsized timepiece.
Netherland By Joseph O’Neill, Harper Perennial,
New York City in the aftermath of 9/11; a family in breakdown; Cricket! Many of us know these things. But cricket in this book is played by West Indians and other almost invisible post-colonial émigrés on the outskirts of the world’s capital. Unexpected depths in a context you think is familiar, but which is revealed anew at every step.
The Master and Margarita By Mikhail Bulgakov, Penguin,
Indian people my age grew up with school libraries stuffed with what the Soviets considered good writing: Sholokhov, Gorky, and gang. Reading this book as an adult was a revelation. The satire, the breadth of reference, the ease with which it navigated genre. Social realism? Not really, when the action includes the devil visiting Moscow with his entourage, and Pontius Pilate struggling with an execution.
Broken April By Ismail Kadare, Vintage,
The Albanian Ismail Kadare lost friends because of his supposed affinity with the mad dictatorship he had to live under. Read this book to see the other side. A young man is forced into a blood feud (look up kanun in the Albanian context) he has been born into, but sees the futility of. He still pulls the trigger.
Broken Wings By Jia Pingwa, translated by Nicky Harman, ACA Publishing Ltd,
Another Chinese book in translation, this time by a man. Jia Pingwa has gained notoriety as a chronicler of the post-Mao transition—some would say breakdown—in mainland Chinese society. Here, he uses human trafficking and the huge ‘shortage’ of women in the Chinese countryside to shine a light on the ‘Chinese dream’.
Ghachar Ghochar By Vivek Shanbhag, Harper Perennial,
A slim, tight masterpiece of creeping weirdness that is built on a careful recitation of mundane things, set in a familial setting that seems cozy but is besieged by darkness. I read Srinath Perur’s translation, which delivers a claustrophobic, immersive experience.
Burning Your Boats By Angela Carter, Vintage,
If you’re minded to use ‘story’ with a capital S, Angela Carter should be your friend. She brought her critical, passionate, yet ice-cool eye to fairy tales and other lore, reinventing them in ways that still confound and delight. This collection— a memorial to a writer with a cruelly short life—belongs on every shelf.
The Watchmaker of Filligree Street By Natasha Pulley, Bloomsbury,
My wild card—a detective story freighted with steampunk invention and a quiet Japanese nobleman who happens to be gay in late 19th-century London. Is it a love story? Is it a historical mystery? I devoured this book in a day, and enjoyed myself immensely.