Must-Read International Literature Picks from India’s Premier Podcast, The Seen and the Unseen!

"The Seen and the Unseen" is India's premier long-form podcast hosted by Amit Varma. The podcast, which has been running since 2017, features long-form conversations with intellectuals, writers, economists, historians, and thought leaders from India and around the world. 

Amit Varma is a respected journalist and writer, twice winner of the Bastiat Prize for Journalism. The show is known for its rich intellectual content and the diversity of its guests, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in public policy, history, culture, or economics in India today. I am only sharing the books recommended related to Literature & Fiction (International):

Contemporary (Latest)

• If I Survive You — Jonathan Escoffery (2022)
• The Book of Goose — Yiyun Li (2022)
• Beautiful Thing — Sonia Faleiro (2021)
• A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes — Rodrigo García (2021)
• Earthlings — Sayaka Murata (2018)

Turn of the Millennium

• Tinkers — Paul Harding (2009)
• All Aunt Hagar’s Children — Edward P. Jones (2006)
• Slow Man — J. M. Coetzee (2005)
• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers — Yiyun Li (2005)
• Runaway — Alice Munro (2004)
• Gilead — Marilynne Robinson (2004)
• Suite Française — Irène Némirovsky (2004, posthumous publication)
• The Known World — Edward P. Jones (2003)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage — Alice Munro (2001)
• The Bear Came Over the Mountain — Alice Munro (2001)

Late 20th Century

• Piercing — Ryu Murakami (1994)
• Norwegian Wood — Haruki Murakami (1987)
• The Door — Magda Szabó (1987)
• Kitchen — Banana Yoshimoto (1988)
• A Summons to Memphis — Peter Taylor (1986)
• The Notebook Trilogy — Ágota Kristóf (1986–1991)
• So Long, See You Tomorrow — William Maxwell (1980)
• Lives of Girls and Women — Alice Munro (1971)

Early to Mid-20th Century

• The Changeling — Kenzaburo Ōe (1964)
• The Foundation Series — Isaac Asimov (1951)
• Jealousy — Marcel Proust (1921)
• The Walk — Robert Walser (1917)
• In Search of Lost Time — Marcel Proust (1913–1927)

19th Century

• Middlemarch — George Eliot (1871–72)
• Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy (1877)
• War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy (1869)
• Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
• House of the Dead — Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862)
• Max Havelaar — Multatuli (1860)
• Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert (1856)

Early Modern

• Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes (1605 / 1615)
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare — William Shakespeare (c. 1590–1613)