Yet these lists perturb me: are the compilers of these lists truly claiming that the only books worth reading by Indian authors are in English? At least, that is what it seems when there is no disclaimer stating linguistic preference. One can only fervently pray that when we talk about the greatest books, pecuniary returns are not the sole or even primary criteria. What caught my attention about this is that when one thinks of the best books by, say, Egyptian authors – another country colonised by the British – the first names to come to mind are Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Nawal El Saadawi, Alaa Al Aswany, Youssef Ziedan, and so on – Arabic writers. It is hard to expect Indian authors to have such uniformity of language but it is odd that not even one writer in the vernacular – and there are so many to choose from: SL Bhyrappa, Shivram Karanth, Kuvempu, Jeyamohan – makes it onto these lists. One might not even realise that there are vibrant local literary circles in India.