Here are some of India's most celebrated authors

It was standing-room only at a World Economic Forum Book Club event at the India Economic Summit 2019 as people crammed in to hear Shashi Tharoor talk about his Inglorious Empire, a Forum book of the month.

Let's take a look at some of the other prominent Indian writers:

Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh became the the first Indian writer in English to win the Jnanpith award which honours writers considered to have made an "outstanding contribution towards literature". His novel Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Arundhati Roy

Her acclaimed novel The God of Small Things, published in 1997, became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. It won the Man Booker Prize the same year.

Vikram Seth

Novelist and poet, Seth is best known for his second novel, A Suitable Boy, published in 1993. The 1,000 page epic is set in post-partition India and follows the lives of four families.

Khushwant Singh

This author, lawyer, journalist, and politician is most acclaimed for his 1956 novel Train to Pakistan. The book explores the partition of India in 1947, as he lived through the events himself working for the Indian Foreign Service. A movie based on the novel was released in 1998.

Amrita Pritam

This poet rose to success writing in Punjabi, and has written over 100 publications translated into other Indian languages. She also wrote the novel Pinjar (The Skeleton) which was made into a critically acclaimed film.

Salman Rushdie

Possibly one of the most influential authors in this list, the British-Indian novelist got his claim to fame with his second publication, Midnight's Children, in 1981. Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature. He was recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novel Quichotte, an award he won for Midnight's Children.

Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies put this author in the spotlight, winning her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. Born in India but raised in the US, Indian-American Lahiri joins many other authors in this list as a Man Booker Prize finalist. She has now started writing in Italian as well.

Chetan Bhagat

Bhagat's novels focus on the lives of young middle-class Indians. His non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times.

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