November in fiction: Five new novels and an anthology bring stories of a shapeshifting India

All information sourced from publishers.

Railsong, Rahul Bhattacharya

In a young country charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless child of a railway worker, pines for a life freed of oppressive domesticity. As diesel engines replace steam, and the calamitous churn of drought, famine, strike, chokes the railway township, she dares to imagine a different future for herself. Boarding a train she flees westwards to Bombay, even as the country rumbles towards Emergency. In the frenetic landscape of the great modern metropolis, Charu, the budding adventuress, seeks the means to live on her own terms.

Tenaciously, she fills the blanks in her life – the idealistic, artistic father Animesh, whom she abandoned; the enigmatic mother Jigyasa, long gone; her funny surname Chitol that no one recognises; her bank balance – with her own material. Negotiating the treacherous planes of love, she marries a sheltered easy-goer. Fighting tragedy and loss, she becomes, after all, a railway woman. Against the rapidly clarifying prejudices around her, unfazed by everyday discriminations, she remains a small hero, an Everywoman who keeps her heart open – sometimes guilelessly – to her nation’s vast possibilities.

The Guardian and the Thief, Megha Majumdar

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly...

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