This is a good season for books and an even better one for reading. So what is being read? William Dalrymple’s and Gurcharan Das’s new titles make it to many lists

Wendy Doniger writer

I’m having a wonderful time reading William Dalrymple’s newest book, Nine Lives, about people whom life has wounded and who are healed by religious movements in India. And Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions, a delightful retelling of the Mahabharata from Draupadi’s point of view, which has made me see new possible readings of the epic. And there is John D. Smith’s excellent new translation of Vyasa’s Mahabharata, which summarises all the parts it doesn’t translate and so gives a relatively quick grasp of the full scope of the text. I am about to embark on India Analysed by Sudhir Kakar and Ramin Jahanbegloo, and Gurcharan Das’s The Difficulty of Being Good. I’m also reading for the book I’m working on about rings that erase memory, beginning with Shakuntala’s.

Aravind Adiga writer

I’m reading the new translation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. It’s terrific.

Manjushree Thapa writer

I’m reading a few new novels and catching up on some I’ve been meaning to get to for years. I’ve just got through Half a Life and Magic Seeds by V.S. Naipaul, and am reading John Burdette’s Bangkok Tattoo as a light ‘palette cleanser’ before starting Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw. My autumn reading includes The File on H by Ismail Kadare, The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, several novels among E.L. Doctorow’s oeuvre, including — if I can get my hands on it in Kathmandu — his new novel, Homer & Langley.

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