100 books 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.

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. 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.

4. 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.

5. Crowfall by Shanta Gokhale (Marathi: Tya Varshi). Translator: Shanta Gokhale. Bombay and how it impacts us all, as seen through the eyes of students. Simple prose and made a deep impression on me.

6. Gulabi Talkies and Other Stories by Janaki “Vaidehi” Srinivasa Murthy(Kannada). Translated by Tejaswini Niranjana. Gulabi Talkies is a compilation of 20 of her short stories written through the 80s and 90s, with pastoral South India as a backdrop, exploring women’s lives.

7. Fish in a Dwindling Lake by Ambai (Tamil). Translator: Lakshmi Holmström. To speak of translations, and not mention Ambai would be blasphemous. This is a stunning collection of short stories told from a woman's gaze. It is about women & desire, women & aging, women & life.

8. The Revenue Stamp by Amrita Pritam. (Raseedi Ticket: Punjabi). Translator: Krishna Gorowara. A life of passion. A life of great talent, that we still appreciate and love. A life of many loves, and perhaps the great true love. A life unlike any other. Read this one, please.

9. Pages Stained with Blood by Indira Goswami (Assamese). Translator: Pradip Acharya. This book is about 1984 and what the country saw in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. And it mostly combines both - fact and fiction, as seen through the eyes of a young woman.

10. Yugānta: The End of an Epoch by Irawati Karve (Marathi). Translated by the author. Irawati Karve takes a look at characters in the Mahabharata each in their own nature - without judgement, without bias. A very nuanced look at the epic.

11. The Armenian Champa Tree by Mahasweta Devi (Bengali). Trnsltr: Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee. Mato, a tribal boy of ten adores his goat Arjun. A tantric demands a sacrifice to goddess Kali & thus begins Mato’s quest to save Arjun, even if it means entering the Armenian church.

12. Defying Winter by Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Bengali: Sheet Sahasik Hemantolok). Translated by Tutun Mukherjee. This novella examines the closed world of the relationships of women within their homes with all its bitterness, anger, intolerance and the finality of it all.

13. Seventeen by Anita Agnihotri: (Bengali). Translator: Arunava Sinha. Seventeen brings together the best of more than one hundred pieces of her published short fiction. By turns intense, angry, sad, & torn by conflict, the stories bring out varied emotions of human life.

14. Zindaginama by Krishna Sobti (Hindi). Translator: Neer Kanwal Mani with Moyna Mazumdar. A book that will make you fall in love 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.

15. Fence by Ila Arab Mehta (Gujarati: Vaad). Translator: Rita Kothari. The story is fictional. The time is real. Post-2002 Godhra riots – the story of Fateema Lokhandwala moving to the city in search of a job and dreams of owning a home.

16. Ship of Sorrows by Qurratulain Hyder (Urdu: Safina e Gham e Dil). Translator: Saleem Kidwai. A coming-of-age story of six friends from Awadh that combines autobiography, fiction, documentation of time and place. A book that left me speechless. I think its my favourite by her.

17. The Pages of My Life: The Autobiography of Popati Hiranandani (Sindhi). Translated by Jyoti Panjwani. This book maps Hiranandani’s journey as a homeless, community-less, displaced woman in times of Partition & after - forever with one step in the past and one in the present.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. The Fifth Man by Bani Basu (Bengali). Translator: Arunava Sinha. Characters come together by chance and sometimes quite expectedly for the drama to unfold, on a trip to Ajanta and Ellora. This is a stunning read of middle-age desire and longing, with some secrets thrown in.

21. The Sharp Knife of Memory by Kondapalli Koteswaramma. (Telugu: Nirjana Vaaradhi). Translator: Sowmya VB. This memoir is of the author educating herself, raising her grandchildren, taking up a job, and writing, set against the backdrop of Independence and Naxalite movements.

22. Yajnaseni by Pratibha Ray (Odiya). Translator: Pradip Bhattacharya. A very nuanced portrait of Draupadi - balancing the shades of grey with what we have heard of her, and also placing her in the modern context.

23. The Hour Past Midnight by Salma (Tamil). Translator: Lakshmi Holmstrom. Do what you must, but please read this gem. This brilliant book of lives of Muslim women in traditional South Indian families cuts deep - of rebellions, friendships, desire, and longing to be more.

24. The Liberation Of Sita by Volga (Telugu). Trnsltrs: C. Vijayasree & T. Vijay Kumar. This is a re-telling of Sita’s story after she is abandoned by Rama. She meets Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya, who teach her what it's like to truly be a woman.

25. Motherwit by Urmila Pawar (Marathi). Translator: Veena Deo. Urmila Pawar is one of the most prominent Dalit authors and with this collection of short stories she brings to fore inner lives of women from all walks of life, spanning across roles they are compartmentalised into.