United Kingdom

The Swimming Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst

A novel set in the privileged world of upper-crust 1980s London, with the protagonist, Will, saving the life of an elderly aristocrat having a heart attack in a public lavatory, setting off the chain of events told in The Swimming Pool Library. 

Hollinghurst's narration is beguiling and vivid, evoking with effortless precision and clarity places most of us will have never experienced. Colonial Sudan and a London gentlemen's club arrive quickly on the page and clearly in one's mind, only to be replaced by other delicate and rich descriptions of people or actions or thoughts. A real pleasure to read. It was one of those few books that, on reaching the end, I wanted the story to keep going. In fact, it seemed as though the story was only getting started by the time I turned the last page. 

I have read some other Hollinghurst in the past, and I shall reserve a space on my bookshelf for some more in the future.

India

The Moor's Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie

I was a big Salman Rusdie junkie when I was younger, and avidly ready all his books. On a number of occasions, I even sought out reader guides to better appreciate and understand the intricacies of his stories and their settings.

For reasons unknown however I never got around to reading his more recent books when they were published. I've had his 2001 book Fury sitting on my bookshelf unread for years. Perhaps with some twinge of a guilty concious, I dusted one of my favourites off the bookshelf a while ago and revisited this family saga that stretches down from the spice-traders of yore through India's independence and to the modern day.

As is often the case in Rushdie's books,the story and the characters act as a parable for India and her history. In this case, following the narrator, Moraes Zogoiby, aka "Moor", as he moves from his families spice warehouses in Cochin to the heights of Bombay's glitterati and the depths of a life on the lamb in sun-scorched Andalusia. It's a grand struggle between good and evil, with the Moor as allegory for India itself.

A friend recently posted this very interesting article about the state of Indian literature in India. It pointed out that the most celebrated Indian authors, Salman Rushdie included, come to India by way of the West. These authors were published and became popular in the West first before being imported back to India. Homegrown Indian authors are actually few and far between.