Non-fiction first, scroll down for fiction. I haven't read much, so any recommendations are appreciated. If you want more Gujarati culture, I also have a post on films and music.
Non-Fiction
These recommendations come from my Ahmedabad trip so they center around the city. I don’t have any nonfiction I strongly universally recommend for Ahmedabad, but I read two books that I can recommend depending on your interest level.
Ahmedabad: From Royal City to Megacity by Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Seth is a fairly dense, dry academic history book, but a good place to go if you want to learn a lot about Ahmedabad’s history, even if it doesn’t exactly bring the city to life. I’m glad I read it, and I used some fun stories from it in my Ahmedabad city guide intro, but normal people will be dreadfully bored by it. Do you need several paragraphs comparing primary sources to determine whether the city was founded in 1411 or 1413? If so, this is the book for you. If not, well, maybe. I admit to being bored by a good one-third or so of it, but I did like it. It perks up from time to time. I really enjoyed the traveler’s accounts, the information on the first ever paintings of the city (often by people who never visited), and the bits from later in the city’s history with Gandhi and the freedom movement which stuck with me more as I had some background knowledge to hang it on. In earlier chapters I kept asking myself questions, “Why did I just spend two pages reading about some obscure mystic or saint that I'm going forget about once I start reading the next few pages on some other little known saint/mystic?”, but I guess the sum of all that gave me a sense of medieval Ahmedabad’s stature that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. The parts about the Gujarat Sultanate were valuable though, as was much else. I never felt any bias in its telling of the history, despite some kneejerk anti-development rhetoric in the modern portions. There was some interesting discussion on the economic roots of the city's communal conflicts.
The other non-fiction book I read was Ahmedabad: City with a Past by Esther David, which is the polar opposite. It’s a very fast, easy read, better for a small trip, and I thought it would be a good balance to the more academic book above. It was a bit too flimsy for me, though, covering too much ground without delving into anything. It does give a sense of the personality of the city better than the above book, and the descriptions of the city’s monuments and their stories (I like how it incorporates the popular history/legends along with the facts) made for lively reading. I would have enjoyed a well structured guidebook from her. There was too much about the author’s own life that I mostly didn’t care about, though. I ultimately wanted a lot more from the book than I got, but it’s a decent read and acts as a conversation with a passionate and well informed local about the city, so I suppose I’m glad I read it.
I picked those two books over Ahmedabad: A City in the World by Amrita Shah, mainly because I wanted more of the historical Ahmedabad and less of modern Ahmedabad. Whether that was the right choice or not, I can’t say. This sounds very good though. The writer is a former editor of Debonair, perhaps India’s greatest magazine of all time, so I feel like not reading this was a stupid decision. The signs were right in front of me and I ignored them, I should be ashamed. I’ll pick this up if I come back, or feel like learning more about Ahmedabad for some reason. Shah also wrote a biography of Vikram Sarabhai, which I can’t say interests me, but that could be a good portrait of the city as well.
And copying and pasting from my Ahmedabad City Guide: there is a book called A Walking Tour Ahmedabad by Matthijs Van Oostrum and Gregory Bracken, containing some self guided heritage walks you can do. I skipped it because the Amazon description didn’t give me anything to go on, and the free sample is of the wrong book! It’s only when I saw the book in a shop late in my trip that I realized it’s great and wished I had bought it. Here is a real sample to give you a sense of if you’d like it or not. If I ever come back I’ll definitely get this. I realize now the more expensive version on Amazon has a proper description and proper sample, oops!
I also enjoyed browsing the Ahmedabad Reddit.
Fiction
I searched for Gujarati fiction in translation as well as any fiction set in Ahmedabad and I surprisingly hardly found anything. Ahmedabad definitely has potential for great historical novels, but nada. I ended up reading short fiction translated from Gujarati.
I went with the collection Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu and was happy with my choice, though I admit I was bored by many of the stories. Dhumketu is an icon of Gujarati literature who was active between the 1920s through his death in the 1960s. Dates aren't listed for the stories in here, but the translator's intro mentions that at least one story was selected from each of Dhumketu's 24 published volumes so the collection chronologically spans his career.
There are around 25 stories, I read around half and I plan to finish it up on future Gujarat trips. I probably only liked roughly a third of the stories (and as I admit in all of these fiction sections, I am not the biggest fan of short fiction overall), but they were short enough that the ones I was less into didn’t discourage me too much, and the highs were strong enough to propel me through the rest.
There's a good range of stories in terms of setting and tone. One of my favorites was Tears of the Soul, based on the ancient story of Amrapali, which I didn’t previously know, and it inspired me to read the Amar Chitra Katha version (reading the two together was a very fun experience). Other favorites are The Queen of Nepal, set among the working class in Darjeeling, and The Noble Daughters-in-Law, which would make a great movie. I also liked the Ahmedabad based On the Banks of the Sarayu, which gives you a look at Pol life and is incredibly relatable to me trying to get work done in an Indian household when the doorbell rings all morning long.
The oldest stories are around a century old now, but the best ones hardly feel dated. Some of them feel very Indian in their storytelling, which I mean in a good way, and there are many interesting details on Indian culture. A footnote on Tears of the Soul is fascinating enough to warrant an entire book on the subject: “In Vaishali, the republican state had a rule that any extremely beautiful woman should remain unmarried to ‘entertain’ the men of the city.” If that doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will! Recommended, if you are into old short stories. I wish I liked the stories more consistently though.
Another collection is The Greatest Gujarati Stories Ever Told, which collects Gujarati stories from a range of writers. I didn’t get around to this yet, but likely will one day and I feel comfortable recommending it as I've sampled collections of this same series from other languages and always found them to be good. If you’re interested in short fiction from Gujarat, I say whether you should get this or the Dhumketu book just depends on whether you want variety or a single author.
There’s also the Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction, not out yet as of writing this, but I’ll definitely give it a look when it releases.
Some novels I saw were the English language works of Esther David, who writes a lot about Ahmedabad's Jewish community. Translated from Gujarati is K.M. Munshi's language Solanki-era historical epic Patan trilogy. I would like to read these one day, but none called to me during my time there.
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