Books Like Us: 8 Wonderful Novels by South Asian Authors

Like many immigrants, Kiran came to America to pursue a college degree. After graduating from Duke, she moves to New York City to start her career, and makes a tight-knit circle of friends who dub themselves the Chai Masala Club (CMC).

Kiran has always been a good daughter, following her parents’ traditions and rules—including not dating, since her parents want her to have an arranged marriage. But when Nash, a handsome psychologist, moves into her building, she feels a connection to him. Nash is new to the city and is just beginning to enjoy all the amazing experiences New York City has to offer, while Kiran is looking to cross things off her own NYC to-do list. The pair decide to explore the city together, but the more time they spend in each other’s company, the harder it is to resist the chemistry between them. I love the way that Annika Sharma makes the city a character in her novel. It’s a charming love story not just between the couple but also between the characters and New York City.

Asha Ray is a computer programmer studying for a PhD at MIT, focused on making her Bangladeshi immigrant parents proud of her accomplishments. When her high school crush, Cyrus Jones, comes back into her life, there’s an instant connection between the two, and they decide to get married on a whim. Asha, a skilled coder, drops out of her PhD program to work with Cyrus to build a thrilling new app, We Are Infinite (WAI). The app creates personalized rituals to replace actual religious ones for various types of real-life traditions. Asha and Cyrus gain the backing of a tech incubator called Utopia, and WAI soon becomes one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.

But Asha begins to feel like she’s stuck in the shadow of her husband in her own boardroom. The lines between work and life begin to blur, and they struggle to separate the two. Can their marriage survive the spotlight of CEO Cyrus’s newfound fame as the “messiah,” or will things fall apart? This novel touches on many aspects of life in our tech-centric world and the struggle to find the right work-life balance. It dives into the grueling world of the tech industry and the challenges women face in STEM careers that are still dominated by men.

The three British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina—were never close growing up, and now, as adults, they’ve grown even further apart. When their mother falls gravely ill, they come together to fulfill her dying wish—that the sisters embark on a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a trip that will surely bring the siblings closer together. But each sister is dealing with her own issues as they try to navigate the distance between what’s expected of them and what feels right for them. The author’s storytelling conveys the complexities of living between cultures and the challenges of upholding traditions while trying to find one’s own way. The novel’s vivid descriptions of the food, sounds, and smells along the journey made me long to hop on a plane and travel overseas to visit my parents’ homeland.

When you think about World War II historical fiction, most of the stories are set in Europe or the United States. But the war had repercussions all over the world. ALL THE LIVES WE NEVER LIVED is set in India and moves between the 1930s and the 1980s as the narrator, Myshkin, now in his sixties, looks back on his childhood. He was known as the boy whose mother ran off with an Englishman, but his father was actually German. His mother, Gayatri, was a rebellious artist who followed her passions and freedom, leaving parenthood and her marriage behind.

Later in life, Myshkin receives a package containing letters written by his mother in the first few years after her disappearance from his life. The contents set him on a path to make sense of that time and his mother’s abandonment of him. As he was dealing with this tumult, the Nazis were rising to power and India was exploring ways to win its freedom from British control. Through his mother’s letters, Myshkin begins to understand how the political climate of the world at that time affected his family so powerfully.

TRUST NO AUNTY by Maria Qamar (also known as @hatecopy) will have you laughing out loud. The book hilariously depicts the types of aunties you may encounter while attending an event with a lot of South Asians—for example, the Matchmaker Aunty, who is trying to find the perfect arranged-marriage match for everyone. As I read this book, I thought of many aunties in my own life who could fit the roles described in this book.

Maria’s art is featured throughout the book; you might recognize it if you watched The Mindy Project. Mindy Kaling is a huge fan of @hatecopy’s work and had some of Maria’s pieces hanging in her apartment in the show.

Daisy Patel is a software engineer who is more interested in lists and logic than in finding a suitable husband. But her desi family is eager to find her an eligible suitor, and her matchmaking aunty keeps dropping by to arrange dates. When attending a conference for work, Daisy runs into her childhood crush, Liam. He’s a venture capitalist who’s looking for his next startup to back when he learns that, in order to receive his inheritance, he must be married within the year.

Liam and Daisy strike up an arrangement—a marriage of convenience—that allows Daisy to put off her meddlesome aunties and Liam to fulfill the terms of his late grandfather’s will. But as the couple spends more time together going on fake dates to keep up the charade, they realize their chemistry is undeniable. Can Daisy forgive Liam for the way he broke her heart when she was a teenager and learn to trust him again?

In Sandhya Menon’s engaging and funny WHEN DIMPLE MET RISHI, Dimple is trying to escape her mom’s obsession with finding the “Ideal Indian Husband” by attending a summer program for aspiring web developers. She’s more focused on her career than on finding a perfect match. Rishi, on the other hand, is a hopeless romantic (who has probably watched a few too many Bollywood movies) who’s thrilled when his parents mention that his potential future wife will be attending the same summer program he is. He’s eager to meet the woman his parents have suggested for an arranged relationship, and when he and Dimple meet, their opposing views clash.

Who doesn’t love a great YA romance? After Zayneb gets suspended for confronting her teacher for being Islamophobic, her parents decide it’s the perfect time to get her away from the nonsense. So, Zayneb kicks off her spring break a little early with a trip to Doha, Qatar, to visit her aunt.

There, she crosses paths with Adam, a college student who’s taking a break from classes after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). He’s intent on hiding his condition from his father, who’s still grieving the loss of Adam’s late mother. Both Zayneb and Adam keep their thoughts locked away in their journal entries—that is, until they meet each other. As they spend more time together and fall in love, they realize that they need to learn from each other how to better address the challenges they face.