The Greatest Indian Animal Stories Ever Told

The collection connects modern Indian literature with the country's older traditions of animal storytelling, including the Panchatantra and Jataka Tales. It features stories such as Premchand's ‘A Tale of Two Bullocks’, Kipling's ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's ‘Mahesh’, Khushwant Singh's ‘The Mark of Vishnu’, R. K. Narayan's ‘A Horse and Two Goats’, Perumal Murugan's ‘Poonachi’, Vikram Seth's ‘The Crocodile and the Monkey’, Ruskin Bond's ‘The Last Tiger’, and Kanishk Tharoor's ‘Elephant at Sea’.

Sumana Roy is an Indian writer, literary critic and academic known for her work across fiction, poetry, essays and literary criticism. In this anthology, she brings together diverse representations of animals in Indian literature, highlighting how they can illuminate human relationships, society, culture and the natural world.

This anthology explores the many ways Indian writers have imagined animals—as companions, workers, victims, symbols, witnesses and independent characters. From bullocks and horses to monkeys, tigers, goats, crocodiles and elephants, the stories reveal both the beauty of the animal world and the complex relationship between humans and other living beings.

Bringing together classic and contemporary voices, the collection offers an engaging introduction to animal-centred Indian fiction while showing how stories about animals can also become stories about humanity itself.