Vidya Krishnan's Top 10 Favourite Books

Annihilation of Caste by Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Pharos Books

Scripture. Originally written as a speech but never delivered, this 36-page text became a blistering indictment of caste apartheid. I read this in my early thirties and it changed how I conduct my life. A book that belongs in every thinking Indian’s household. 

My Traitor’s Heart by Rian Malan, Vintage

One of the best books about majoritarian guilt. This is a searing memoir by South African journalist Rian Malan, himself a descendant of apartheid architect David Malan. He confronts his family legacy and the moral horror of apartheid by blending crime reporting with confessions. Particularly instructive for anti-caste Brahmins.

The Doctor and The Saint by Arundhati Roy, Penguin

I admire Roy’s fiction deeply, but it’s her non-fiction that has changed me in lasting ways. This book is one of my absolute favourites. She revisits the historic debate between Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi on caste. Essential reading for every Indian.

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, Faber

A masterclass in political fiction, this page-turner explores the final days of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and unfolds across three interwoven timelines: the fall of the regime; the year leading up to the collapse; and a personal story of Urania Cabral, daughter of a disgraced official in the Trujillo regime.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, Penguin

This novel is a hug for my heart. I return to it often. The novel follows Florentino Ariza, who waits over fifty years to reunite with Fermina Daza, the woman he loved and lost in his youth. It is not just a romantic epic. It’s about how long desires can endure.

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall, Penguin

A meticulously reported story, capturing the human cost of Israel’s occupation of Palestine—not through abstract policy or rhetoric, but through the agonizing experience of a father searching for his son after a tragic school-bus accident near Jerusalem. It blends journalism with beautiful narrative.

The Plague by Albert Camus, Penguin

An allegorical novel about a pandemic in the Algerian town of Oran, that turns into a philosophical meditation on resistance and human decency. Camus used the outbreak as a metaphor for fascism but, today, it is instructive in many ways. Most pertinently, it is about our duty to bear witness, and the refusal to surrender to indifference.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, Penguin

A classic that explores the psychological trauma of colonial violence. Fanon was a psychiatrist in French-occupied Algeria and wrote about how the occupation distorts the mind and soul of the colonized. It is part-political-manifesto, part-philosophical-treatise. My favourite thing about it is how unapologetic it is. A foundational text for understanding resistance in the global South.