ReadingRate · Best Books · 2026

The best books from India

Ranked by literary regard, Indian writing is led by its classical corpus — the Upanishads, Kalidasa's poetry, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana — followed by modern work from Rushdie, Roy, Tagore and Ghosh. It is the deepest continuous literary tradition on any of these lists, running roughly three thousand years, and this ranks the top 100 with difficulty scores for each.

A computed ranking from literary-regard scores. India's list spans a wider stretch of time than any other on this site, and the difficulty data separates the ancient material sharply: the Bhagavad Gita is one of the most approachable entries here despite its age, while the Upanishads are among the hardest. Modern Indian writing in English sits in between.

1–10

  1. The Principal Upanishads by Anonymous (Vedic Tradition) (-700, difficulty 7.9/10)
  2. Meghaduta by Kalidasa (400, difficulty 6.7/10)
  3. Mahabharata by Vyasa (-400, difficulty 6.6/10)
  4. Ramayana by Valmiki (-500, difficulty 5.4/10)
  5. Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988, difficulty 8.8/10)
  6. Tirukkural by Thiruvalluvar (100, difficulty 6.3/10)
  7. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988, difficulty 7.9/10)
  8. The Bhagavad Gita by Vyasa (-200, difficulty 3.3/10)
  9. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Anonymous (Vedic Tradition) (difficulty 6.8/10)
  10. The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi (1929, difficulty 5.2/10)

11–20

  1. The Location of Culture by Homi K. Bhabha (1994, difficulty 7.5/10)
  2. Shakuntala by Kalidasa (400, difficulty 5.0/10)
  3. Gita Govinda by Jayadeva (1200, difficulty 6.4/10)
  4. Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar (1936, difficulty 5.8/10)
  5. Godaan by Premchand (1936, difficulty 5.9/10)
  6. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1999, difficulty 7.8/10)
  7. Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen (1999, difficulty 4.9/10)
  8. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981, difficulty 6.7/10)
  9. Arthashastra by Kautilya (-300, difficulty 5.1/10)
  10. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (1988, difficulty 7.9/10)

21–30

  1. Natyashastra by Bharata Muni (-200, difficulty 7.9/10)
  2. Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (1910, difficulty 5.3/10)
  3. Panchatantra by Vishnu Sharma (300, difficulty 6.1/10)
  4. Chokher Bali by Rabindranath Tagore (1903, difficulty 5.4/10)
  5. The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru (1946, difficulty 5.9/10)
  6. Samskara by U.R. Ananthamurthy (1965, difficulty 6.9/10)
  7. Gora by Rabindranath Tagore (1910, difficulty 6.1/10)
  8. The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore (1912, difficulty 5.2/10)
  9. The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (1916, difficulty 5.8/10)
  10. Tughlaq by Girish Karnad (1964, difficulty 6.4/10)

31–40

  1. Kanthapura by Raja Rao (1938, difficulty 6.4/10)
  2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997, difficulty 6.2/10)
  3. The Way of the Bodhisattva by Śāntideva (2003, difficulty 4.2/10)
  4. Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1882, difficulty 6.0/10)
  5. River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder (1959, difficulty 7.9/10)
  6. Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi (1997, difficulty 7.0/10)
  7. Hayavadana by Girish Karnad (1971, difficulty 6.8/10)
  8. Shame by Salman Rushdie (1983, difficulty 7.1/10)
  9. The Quilt and Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai (1990, difficulty 5.7/10)
  10. Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana (300, difficulty 5.0/10)

41–50

  1. Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand (1935, difficulty 5.0/10)
  2. Nirmala by Premchand (1927, difficulty 5.0/10)
  3. Tamas by Bhisham Sahni (1974, difficulty 6.3/10)
  4. The Guide by R.K. Narayan (1958, difficulty 6.2/10)
  5. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956, difficulty 5.0/10)
  6. Pinjar by Amrita Pritam (1950, difficulty 5.4/10)
  7. Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi (1974, difficulty 6.3/10)
  8. Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1917, difficulty 4.5/10)
  9. Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan (1943, difficulty 3.7/10)
  10. My Story by Kamala Das (1976, difficulty 2.1/10)

51–60

  1. The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao (1960, difficulty 7.6/10)
  2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (1990, difficulty 4.8/10)
  3. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (2008, difficulty 7.0/10)
  4. Animal's People by Indra Sinha (2007, difficulty 4.7/10)
  5. The Man-Eater of Malgudi by R.K. Narayan (1961, difficulty 4.7/10)
  6. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh (2016, difficulty 6.5/10)
  7. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh (1995, difficulty 7.3/10)
  8. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (1986, difficulty 5.9/10)
  9. River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (2011, difficulty 6.2/10)
  10. The Vendor of Sweets by R.K. Narayan (1967, difficulty 2.7/10)

61–70

  1. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008, difficulty 5.9/10)
  2. That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande (1988, difficulty 5.8/10)
  3. Coolie by Mulk Raj Anand (1936, difficulty 4.8/10)
  4. Baumgartner's Bombay by Anita Desai (1988, difficulty 6.2/10)
  5. Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan (1935, difficulty 4.6/10)
  6. The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh (2000, difficulty 4.8/10)
  7. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2006, difficulty 7.4/10)
  8. The Bachelor of Arts by R.K. Narayan (1937, difficulty 3.5/10)
  9. The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan (1952, difficulty 6.3/10)
  10. Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (2015, difficulty 6.0/10)

71–80

  1. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (2008, difficulty 6.8/10)
  2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1993, difficulty 5.9/10)
  3. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010, difficulty 3.2/10)
  4. Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (1999, difficulty 6.9/10)
  5. Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy (2015, difficulty 5.6/10)
  6. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai (1980, difficulty 5.0/10)
  7. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (2022, difficulty 6.5/10)
  8. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (2006, difficulty 6.4/10)
  9. A Burning by Megha Majumdar (2020, difficulty 4.2/10)
  10. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (2012, difficulty 5.8/10)

81–90

  1. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh (2004, difficulty 5.1/10)
  2. The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (2014, difficulty 5.6/10)
  3. Quichotte by Salman Rushdie (2019, difficulty 6.8/10)
  4. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1996, difficulty 5.3/10)
  5. The English Teacher by R.K. Narayan (1945, difficulty 3.8/10)
  6. The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri (2001, difficulty 5.7/10)
  7. Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga (2011, difficulty 5.1/10)
  8. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016, difficulty 3.1/10)
  9. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq (2025, difficulty 4.9/10)
  10. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (2002, difficulty 5.1/10)

91–100

  1. All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews (2023, difficulty 4.0/10)
  2. Selection Day by Aravind Adiga (2016, difficulty 5.3/10)
  3. The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (1995, difficulty 6.2/10)
  4. Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran (1998, difficulty 3.0/10)
  5. Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (1991, difficulty 5.3/10)
  6. In Custody by Anita Desai (1984, difficulty 5.2/10)
  7. A History of Indian Literature by Shashibhushan Dasgupta (1962, difficulty 5.3/10)
  8. An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (1999, difficulty 6.9/10)
  9. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (2017, difficulty 6.0/10)
  10. A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (2025, difficulty 3.8/10)

Questions people actually ask

What are the best Indian books?
By literary regard: the Principal Upanishads, Kalidasa's Meghaduta, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Tirukkural lead, with The Satanic Verses, The God of Small Things and Tagore's work heading the modern entries. ReadingRate ranks the top 100.
Where should I start with Indian classical literature?
The Bhagavad Gita. It holds high literary regard at one of the lowest difficulty scores on this list — short, self-contained, and far more approachable than the Upanishads or the full Mahabharata it sits inside.
How long is the Mahabharata?
It is among the longest epics ever composed, roughly ten times the combined length of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Most readers meet it through an abridgement; the reading-time estimate on its page is for the full text.
What should I read from modern Indian literature?
The God of Small Things and Midnight's Children are the usual entry points and both carry strong regard. By the difficulty data Roy reads more easily than Rushdie, whose density and allusion push his scores toward the top of the list.