The Age of Shiva
Six years after the acclaimed The Death of Vishnu, Manil Suri turns his gaze on India in the aftermath of Independence. The Age of Shiva is a sweeping epic that traces the fortunes of a family in independent India. The book is the powerful story of an ancient society in transition and an extraordinary portrait of maternal love.

The Enchantress of Florence
There's fabulous escapism to be had as Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence transports the reader to the 16th-century Mughal court where a visitor from the Florentine world of Machiavelli wins the attention of the emperor himself. According to The Guardian, Rushdie sets up symmetries between east and west in a bejewelled extravaganza with shades of Borges.

The Adventures of Amir Hamza
The Arabian Nights of the Mughal world in its definitive English translation—here is the spellbinding story of Amir Hamza, adventurer and uncle of Prophet Mohammed, who travels to exotic lands, defeats many enemies and encounters along the way warriors and kings, tricksters and fairies, courtesans and magical creatures.

Something to Tell You
Hanif Kureishi’s newest work follows the fortunes of a successful psychoanalyst who, as the book opens, is reflecting on his coming-of-age in 1970s suburbia; on his first love (a relationship that continues to haunt him), and on a brutal act of violence from which he can never escape. One of Britain’s greatest contemporary writers, Kureishi brilliantly captures that decade’s sense of sexual freedom, and the exhilaration of the drug culture—as well as the violent struggle between the forces of labour and capital.

The Geometry of God
This novel by Uzma Aslam Khan is a masterful depiction of how personal yearning shapes and is created by larger conflicts. The Pakistani author of The Story of Noble Rot and Trespassing, this time churns out a book which is at once playful and bold, intimate and grand. The book takes an argument that is in danger of becoming stale-that of fundamentalism versus free thinking among Muslims-and animates it in a wonderfully inventive story that pits science against politics and the freedom of women against the insecurities of men.

Sea of Poppies
Amitav Ghosh’s trilogy, of which Sea of Poppies is the first book, set in 19th century Calcutta, is touted as a tremendous work and genuinely epic in vision. It combines with effortless mastery the drama of individual lives with the big themes of history. It does what the greatest novels do: Accommodate almost every aspect of human experience in one sweeping narrative.

The Japanese Wife
This is one of those rare books whose cinematic version is likely to have a release, coinciding with its debut journey to the stands. The title tale of Kunal Basu’s first collection of stories is being made into a film by Aparna Sen with Rahul Bose and Chigasu Takaku in the lead. It’s a love story between a simple schoolteacher and a Japanese girl, called “lyrical” by Sen, that begins with the two exchanging letters.