If I loved A Fine Balance...

[PeacockMansion]

Books I have read and loved:

A Fine Balance
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
A Thousand Splendid Suns
And The Mountains Echoed
The Kite Runner
I'm reading Songbirds by Christina Lefteri at the moment but it's not gripping me.

I'm interested in more fiction set in India or middle East - I have A Suitable Boy ready but desperately want recommendations. Help?! Thank you

God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is excellent

Also Such a Long Journey and Family Matters if you've not tried any others of Rohinton Mistry

Not what you're asking for setting wise but you might like Donna Tartt, particularly the Goldfinch

If you loved A Fine Balance you'll really enjoy Rohinton Mistry's other novels especially Family Matters and Such A Long Journey.

Animal's People by Indra Sinha is also wonderful

I absolutely loved The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia . Her lyrical style reminds me a little of Khaled Husseini.

Also Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar. It’s set in Kurdish Iran.

If you loved a fine balance, you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to find a book that’s as good 😉

Try Mosquito Coast, Poisonwood Bible, The Namesake, Half of. yellow Sun.

A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naisul, set among the Indian Community in Trinidad.
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott, in the dying days of the Raj; and Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
For more contemporary India, White Tiger. I can't remember the author, but I think it won a recent ish Booker.

A Fine Balance is a fantastic book! And yes to pp, I enjoyed White Tiger too.

I agree with you about Songbirds, I finished it a few days ago. I found the ending disappointing and the characters one-dimensional.

I’d also recommend Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, set in Mumbai, a police officer is trying to hunt down an infamous gang leader. It was made in to a series, on Netflix.

Shantaram is good

One last suggestion, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Not a laugh a minute, but beautifully written and observed.

An Equal Music

The God of Small Things

You have all made me VERY happy!! I might leave Songbirds and move on to a new book. THANK YOU!

Anyone read any Amitav Ghosh? I’ve just started Sea of Poppies but am finding in really hard going : so many words I don’t know, I have to stop and look them up !

asking here as Ghosh fits in with the general type of book being discussed here, and I too loved A Fine Balance.

Amitav Ghosh is very good but I would suggest The Hungry Tides or The Calcutta Chromosome.

You might enjoy Reading Lolita in Tehran. Not the Middle East of course but a lovely book.

I'm adding all these to a wishlist. Some I'm getting on audible so I can listen in the car...

Oh oh !

The Architects Apprentice by Élif Shafak. Just wonderful.

Adding right now!

A Fine Balance is one of my all time favourite novels and it is hard to find an equivalent but I'd agree with books such as Half of A Yellow Sun and the Poison wood Bible being up there. White Teeth and Andrea Levy Small Island? A Suitable Boy is also amazing. I recently read a John Boyne I loved although pretty distressing in places the Hearts Invisible Furies. Everything I have read by Elif Sharak has been interesting. American Dirt is a must-read....