11 novels that must be adapted into Bollywood movies

The Indian film industry is not all about running around trees. Since its inception, the Indian audience has witnessed the production of some invaluable gems through the big screen. Time and again, Indian cinema has adapted some brilliant novels into movies and have bedazzled us with their beautiful stories and the glamour of cinema itself. Needless to say, even today, there are people who would prefer the movie to the book. Over the years, some phenomenal books have come out that amazed us with their stories and their narrative techniques. Here is a list of a few of our favourite novels we desperately want Bollywood to adapt.

Joseph’s second masterpiece traces the life of Ayyan Mani, a dalit slum-dweller from Mumbai, working as an assistant to the Director of the Institute of Theory and Research. Ayyan’s carefully laid-out scheme to escape from the regularity of his commonness is a perfect match for the big screen.
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This is the story of Bombay, a city that conceals the almost invisible Parsi corpse bearer community, who take upon themselves the task of carrying dead bodies to the Tower of Silence. This is a hauntingly magnificent love story of a Parsi priest’s son with an aged corpse bearer’s daughter. Inspired from a true story, Mitsry conjures a beautiful hex which will look as magical when seen on screen.
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Warped in a time frame from a Victorian India to a modern-day New York, the novel takes the readers on a journey when a computer programmer trapped in a demanding job discovers something lifechanging. The novel spirals into an adventure across centuries around the globe, into the life of a man obsessed with the clinical history of malaria. This is a pretty great script for a movie not looking for a linear narrative.
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The novel illustrates the life of Mohun Biswas, leaping from shelter to shelter, with the hope to finally find a place he can call “home”. A tale of longing and belonging, the book speaks of a diasporic experience of a man struggling for independence within his own self. Naipaul’s genius novel is a great script for any movie trying to showcase an entanglement of humour and hostility in nature.

This magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India during the time of Emergency in 1975. This is a story of 4 strangers, moving from distrust to friendship, and from friendship to love – exactly something the country could use right now, in the form of a brilliantly directed movie.
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The tragically beautiful story of a family amidst mental disease, trying to hold on to each other, is one brilliant masterpiece by Pinto. If adapted into a movie, the script can make any stone-heart howl in agony.
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This fast-paced, thought-inducing novel is strewn with dark homour about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and conspiracies. Though essentially Pakistani, this story of revenge, with the main target being general Zia Ul-Haq, can become of the best thrillers to come out of Bollywood.
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A beautiful graphic novel that illuminates the conflicted land of Kashmir through a 7-year-old boy’s childhood, Munnu is an experience of conflicts and possibilities. We are much need for such rich scripts in Bollywood. Is someone listening?
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Brilliantly written and laced by a beautiful sense of humour, Manu’s witty and observant style chronicles the life of Ousep Chacko, a journalist and a failed novelist, who finds himself searching for answers after his comic-book obsessed son dies after falling from the balcony. The book is wry and poignant, teasing us with brilliant simplicity, mystery and an unlikely love story. Definitely calls for the big screen!
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Narcopolis is a hallucinatory dream of a novel about Bombay in the 1970s. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters, and eunuchs, the novel is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose. Pretty compelling script for a movie!
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The novel is narrated by Draupadi and traces her life of balancing between five husbands cheated out of their father’s kingdom. This fantastic retelling of Mahabharata from a woman’s perspective will definitely be a treat to the Indian audience.
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