Prep for Jaipur Literature Festival 2015

3) The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

It is the longest book (at 832 pages), and Catton is the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker Prize  (at age 28). The plot follows Walter Moody, a prospector who travels to the fledgling West Coast in the hope of making a fortune. Instead, he stumbles into a tense meeting between 12 local men, who draw him into a complex mystery behind a series of unsolved crimes.

Cheat: “It’s the type of book that you devour quickly without delving into the nuances and details. I especially enjoyed how her writing conformed to a 19th-century setting. It's refreshing to read straightforward character descriptions, along with old-fashioned rundowns of their physical attributes.”

The Zee Jaipur Literature Festival is around the corner. But before you get there you should at least attempt to catch up on books by some of the marquee speakers (because that would be nice). On the off chance that you can't, we hook you up with a cheat sheet to glide through the festival.

1) Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China by Jung Chang

Few books ruffle as many feathers as this paperback. It's a family history that spans across a century, and seen through the eyes of Chang's grandmother, mother and Chung herself. It follows the lives of these women living in Mao’s China. Twent