The Granta Book of India brings together, for the first time, evocative, personal and informative pieces from previous editions of Granta magazine, all on the experiences of Indian life, culture and politics. Chitra Banerji: What Bengali widows cannot eat; Mark Tully on his childhood in Calcutta; Ian Jack: ‘Unsteady People’ - on unexpected parallels between Bihar and Britain; Urvashi Butalia on tracing her long-lost uncle; a poem by Salman Rushdie about the fatwa; Ramachandra Guha: What we think of America; Nirad Chaudhuri writing on his 100th birthday; Rory Stewart among the dervishes of Pakistan; Pankaj Mishra on the making of jihadis in Pakistan; Suketu Mehta on Mumbai. PLUS: fiction by R K Narayan, Amit Chaudhuri and Nell Freudenberger.