Here’s a new one. I just have to do this since it was bothering me that these titles weren’t being included. 100 books written by Indian women in Translation. There are so many of them and I can’t wait. So here we go. So many languages. So many books. Much needed translations.

1. A life in words: Memoirs by Ismat Chughtai. (Urdu title: Kaghazi hai Pairahan). Translator: M. Asaduddin. This book is an honest account of a writer’s life – from childhood to youth to old-age. Chughtai speaks of women’s liberation to class differences with great intensity.

2. Hangwoman by K.R. Meera (Malayalam: Aarachaar). Translator: J. Devika. Twenty-two year old, Chetna is the first lady executioner of India and with a family tradition to take over. Of course, that is where the title comes from, but there is more to it than the obvious. Layered!

3. Matchbox: Stories by Ashapurna Debi (Bengali). Translator: Prasenjit Gupta. These 22 stories render the voice of a culture, of traditions, customs, with great insight. Every story has a female character set against the home or family, while trying hard to navigate life.

4. Zindaginama by Krishna Sobti (Hindi). Translator: Neer Kanwal Mani with Moyna Mazumdar. A book that will make you fall in love with it, with its characters, the story that ranges from pre-independence to Partition & how life people deal with all of this. A magnum opus for sure

5. Panty by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay (Bengali). Translator: Arunava Sinha. “Panty” by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is a collection of two novellas – Hypnosis and Panty and each of them is all about love, longing and sexual desire that runs deeper than we know or care to admit.

6. Karukku by Bama (Tamil). Translator: Lakshmi Holmström. A seminal autobiographical novel that chronicles the joys and sorrows of Dalit Christian women in Tamil Nadu. It is the novel that must be read, without a shadow of doubt. Just read it.

7. Written in Tears by Arupa Patangia Kalita. (Assamese). Translator: Ranjita Biswas. Aggression. Hate. A landscape torn by conflict. Human stories and novellas set against a backdrop of violence and sometimes hope.