These books are recommended as background reading for Study India participants. They should be easily available either in a local bookshop or via Amazon. It is a not a compulsory list but we hope you may enjoy reading some of them!

Non-Fiction
Aijaz Ahmad - Ghazals of Ghalib: Versions from the Urdu
William Dalrymple - The Last Mughal
William Dalrymple - City of Djinns: A year in Delhi
Richard M Eaton - A Social History of the Deccan. Eight Indian Lives Sunil
Amitav Ghosh - Incendiary Circumstances
Yasmin Khan - The Great Partition. The Making of India and Pakistan
Khilnani - The Idea of India
Partha Mitter - Indian Art
Amartya Sen - The Argumentative Indian

Fiction
Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay
Amitav Ghosh - Shadow Lines
Sadat Hassan Manto - Selected Stories, (Penguin books, 2007)
Pankaj Mishra - The Romantics
Kiran Nagarkar - Cuckold
R.K. Narayan - Malgudi Days
Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram (Mumbai)
Salman Rushdie - Midnight’s Children
Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Learning Hindi
A Door into Hindi: http://taj.chass.ncsu.edu/lessons.html
Rupert Snell with Simon Weightman, Teach yourself Hindi, London (rev. edn) 2000.
Rupert Snell, Teach yourself beginner’s Hindi script, London 2000.