Bookshelf

Contributors to the Silk Routes website share their favorite works of any genre, searchable by contributor, country, or author and title. If you would like additional resources, please visit Reading & Writing, Translation, and Community.

The Silk Routes: Heritage, Trade, Practice Virtual Bookshelf amasses recommendations from Silk Routes participants and mentors—themselves writers, teachers, literary organizers, and cultural entrepreneurs—and offers a unique collection of books from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

Dhari Buyabes's Bookshelf (Ardiya, Kuwait)

Down and Out in Paris and London George Orwell	The Prophet Kahlil Gibran	The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini	Johnny Got His Gun Dalton Trumbo
Ports of Call Amin Maalouf	Hard Times Charles Dickens	The Bamboo Stalk Saud Alsanousi	1984 George Orwell

Siok Tian Heng's Bookshelf (Singapore, Singapore)

The Oldest Girl in the World Carol Ann Duffy	Power Politics Margaret Atwood	Poems New and Collected Wislawa Szymborka	The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 Nikki Giovanni
The Poems of Marianne Moore Marianne Moore	Best Poems of Stevie Smith Stevie Smith	The Tempest William Shakespeare (author), Barbara A. Mowat (editor)	King Lear William Shakespeare (author), Barbara A. Mowat (editor)
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Ranjit Hoskote's Bookshelf (Bombay / Mumbai, India)

Rooms Are Never Finished, A book of Poems Agha Shahid Ali	An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales Oliver Sacks	Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind Gerald M. Edelman	Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations Phillip Guston
Lunch Poems Frank O'Hara	Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell Charles Simic	Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia Peter Hopkirk	The Dream of a Common Language Adrienne Rich
Forms of Attention Frank Kermode	Under the Sign of Saturn Susan Sontag	The Death of Mr. Baltisberger Bohumil Hrabal (Author) and Michael Henry Haim (Translator)	The Master and Margarita Mikihail Bulgakov

Ameena Hussein's Bookshelf (Colombo, Sri Lanka)

China Bay Blues Shehani Fernando Afdhel Aziz	There's an Island in the Bone Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe	Stitch your Eyelids Shut Vivimarie Vanderpoorten	A Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies Robert Knox
Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka Kumari Jayawardena	Walking to Kataragama Sunil Goonasekera	Beggar's Feast Randy Boyagoda	Chinaman Shehan Karunatilaka
Island of a Thousand Mirrors Nayomi Munaweera

Usha K R's Bookshelf (Bangalore, India)

Collected Poems Philip Larkin (author), Anthony Thwaite (editor)	Speaking of Shiva Anonymous (author), A.K. Ramanujan (translator)	Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov	How Fiction Works James Wood
Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Short Cuts: Selected Stories Raymond Carver	Dots and Lines Jayant Kaikini	Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man U.R. Anantha Murthy (author), U.R. Ananthamurthy (translator)

Niranjan Kunwar's Bookshelf (Kathmandu, Nepal)

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times Pema Chodron	The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative Vivian Gornick	New and Selected Poems Mary Oliver	On Being Blue William H. Gass
Life of Pi Yann Martel	The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy	Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri	The Hours Michael Cunningham
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje	Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie	Roots: Saga of an American Family Alex Haley	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald	Giovanni's Room James Baldwin	The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery	The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author), Gregory Rabassa (translator)	Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert	Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

Farzana Marie's Bookshelf (Kabul, Afghanistan)

The Essential Rumi Jalal al-Din Rumi (author); Coleman Barks (translator)	Drawn to the Light Marilyn Chandler McEntyre	Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words Susan G. Wooldridge	Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Alfred Lansing
Women Who Run with the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estés	The War Works Hard Dunya Mikhail	Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle Dervla Murphy	Given Sugar, Given Salt Jane Hirshfield
Images of Afghanistan: Exploring Afghan Culture through Art and Literature Arley Loewen and Josette McMichael

Kavery Nambisan's Bookshelf (Lonavla, India)

Trying to Say Goodbye Adil Jussawalla	Selected Poems Dom Moraes (author), Ranjit Hoskote (editor)	60 Indian Poems Jeet Thayil	MS: A Life in Music T.G.S. George
Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth Mohandas Gandhi	My Son's Father: An Autobiography Dom F. Moraes	Collected Plays Girish Karnad	Collected Novellas Vaikom Muhammad Basheer
English, Auguest: An Indian Story Upamanyu Chatterjee

Farkhonda Rajabe's Bookshelf (Mazar e Sharif, Afghanistan)

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi (author), Polly Mclean (translator)

Suvani Singh's Bookshelf (Kathmandu, Nepal)

The Country is Yours: Contemporary Nepali Literature Manjushree Thapa	Dancing Soul of Mount Everest: Creator & Creation Momila (editor), Mahesh Paudyal (translator)	La.Lit: New Fiction from Nepal Rabi Thapa (editor)	Eloquent Hills: Essays on Nepali Literature Michael Hutt
A History of Nepal John Whelpton	Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy Manjushree Thapa	Mountains Painted with Turmeric Lil Bahadur Chettri (author), Michael J. Hutt (translator)	Nothing to Declare Rabi Thapa
The Vanishing Act Prawin Adhikari

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis's Bookshelf (Bodhgaya, India)

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Swami Vivekananda	The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry Vinay Dharwadker and A.K. Ramanujan	New Poetry in Hindi Lucy Rosenstein (editor and translator)	An Anthology of Modern Hindi Poetry Kailash Vajpeyi
Modern Indian Poetry in English Bruce King	Indian Poetry Edwin Arnold	The Light of Asia Edwin Arnold	A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
The Rig Veda Anonymous	Gitanjali Rabindranath Tagore	Wonder that was India A.L. Basham	The Arthashastra Kautilya
The Discovery of India Jawaharlai Nehru

Sridala Swami's Bookshelf (Hyderabad, India)

Life and Times of Mr. S: Poems Vivek Narayanan	Vanishing Acts: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2005 Ranjit Hoskote	If It's Monday it Must be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India Srinath Perur	Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars Sonia Faleiro
Annihilation of Caste B.R. Ambedkar (author), S. Anand (editor)	Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings Kuzhali Manickavel	Cuckold Kiran Nagarkar	Sacred Games Vikram Chandra

Yui Tanizaki's Bookshelf (Kyoto, Japan)

A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan	Animal's People Indra Sinha	The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai	Indian Nocturne Antonio Tabucchi (author), Tim Parks (translator)
The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction Virginia Woolf	The Real Life of Sebastian Knight Vladimir Nabokov	Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges (author), Anthony Kerrigan (editor), Anthony Bonner (translator)	Collected Stories Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author), Gregory Rabassa (translator)

Bilal Tanweer's Bookshelf (Karachi, Pakistan)

I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded Lal Ded (author), Ranjit Hoskote (translator)	Rococo and Other Worlds Afzal Ahmed Syed (author), Musharraf Ali Farooqi (translator)	High Noon and the Body Kyla Pasha	Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi Rana Dasgupta
Alegebra of Infinite Justice Arundhati Roy	Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland Basharat Peer	Bombay Stories Saadat Hasan Manto	Chinaman Shehan Karunatilaka
A Case of Exploding Mangoes Mohammed Hanif

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