A Very Indian Christmas: The Greatest Indian Holiday Stories of All Time

SALMAN RUSHDIE (1947- ) was born in Bombay. His second novel, Midnight's Children, won the 1981 Booker Prize. After his fourth book, Satanic Verses, was published in 1988, he became the subject of assassination attempts and a fatwa calling for his death, issued by Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini.

JHUMPA LAHIRI (1967- ) was born in London to immigrants from the Indian state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was three years old. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, the first to be awarded to an Asian. He was an eminent Bengali poet, critic, essayist, composer, and author of short fiction.

ARAVIND ADIGA (1974- ) won the 2008 Booker Prize for his debut novel The White Tiger. He was born in 1974 and has written three other novels--Amnesty, Selection Day, and Last Man in Tower--as well as a story collection, Between the Assassinations.

KHUSHWANT SINGH (1915-2014) wrote many novels including Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, and The Company of Women, as well as nonfiction works like A History of the Sikhs.

JERRY PINTO (1966- ) is a Mumbai-based novelist, short story writer, translator, and journalist. He won the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2016 for his fiction. He is a Roman Catholic of Goan origin.