The list of important books and authors plays a crucial role in the General Awareness section of competitive exams such as SSC CGL, SSC CHSL, Bank Exams, Railways, State PSCs, and other government exams. Having a reliable and well-compiled Books & Authors list not only supports exam preparation but also helps reading enthusiasts discover notable works across genres and time periods.
From an exam point of view, the Static GK portion frequently includes direct, fact-based questions related to book titles, their authors, publication years, and award-winning literary pieces. These questions are easy to score, provided you revise a consolidated and accurate list. Almost every government exam includes at least a few questions from this topic, making it an essential part of your preparation strategy.
To save your Time and Effort, we have created a comprehensive collection of important books and authors for SSC CGL Exam , covering classic literature, modern works, non-fiction, award-winning books, as well as English, Hindi, and historical literature. This single curated list helps you avoid searching through multiple sources and enables you to focus your preparation with greater clarity and confidence.
By going through this structured list of books and authors, you can strengthen your General Awareness, improve recall during the exam, and boost your overall chances of success in exam.
Famous Books and Authors from Ancient India
Ancient India produced some of the most remarkable literary and scholarly works that shaped Indian culture, science, and philosophy. From epic poems and dramas to treatises on politics, mathematics, and medicine, these books were written by legendary authors like Kalidasa, Chanakya, Panini, and Aryabhatta. Knowing these works is essential for competitive exams as questions from this era are frequently asked in SSC, UPSC, and other government exams.
| Books Name | Authors Name |
| Amarkosha | Amarsimha |
| Prashnottarmalika | Amoghavarsha |
| Surya Siddhanta | Aryabhatta |
| Buddha Charita | Ashvaghosha |
| Harshacharita, Kadambari | Banabhatta |
| Natyashastra | Bharata Muni |
| Swapnavasavadattam | Bhasa |
| Lilavati | Bhaskara II |
| Arthashastra | Chanakya |
| Charaka Samhita | Charaka |
| Gathasaptashati | Hala |
| Nagananda, Ratnavali | Harshavardhana |
| Gita Govinda | Jayadeva |
| Rajatarangini | Kalhana |
| Abhigyan Shakuntalam, Vikramorvashi, Raghuvansham, Meghadutam | Kalidasa |
| Nitisara | Kamandaka |
| Arthashastra | Kautilya (Chanakya) |
| Indica | Megasthenes |
| Ashtadhyayi | Panini |
| Mahabhasya | Patanjali |
| Aihole Prashasti | Ravi Kriti |
| Mrichchhakatika | Shudraka |
| Kathasaritsagara | Somadeva |
| Naishadhacharitra | Sri Harsha |
| Panchsiddhantika, Brihat Samhita | Varahamihira |
| Kamasutra | Vatsyayana |
| Navratna | Virsena |
| Mudrarakshasa | Visakhadatta |
| Panchatantra | Vishnu Sharma |
Famous Books and Authors From Medieval India
Medieval India witnessed a flourishing of literature in Persian, Arabic, and regional languages. Renowned authors like Amir Khusrau, Alberuni, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, and Minhaj-us-Siraj produced works on history, culture, travel, and poetry. These literary contributions are significant for competitive exams such as SSC, UPSC, and State PSCs, as questions about medieval books and authors are frequently asked.
| Famous Books | Authors Name |
| Tarikh-i-Sher Shah | Abbas Sarwani |
| Kitab-fi-Tahqiq, Tahqiq-e-Hind | Alberuni |
| Khamsa | Amir Khusrau |
| Khazain-ul-Futuh | Amir Khusrau |
| Nuh-Siphir | Amir Khusrau |
| Tughlaq-Nama | Amir Khusrau |
| Shah Nama | Firdausi |
| Fatuhat-i-Firoz | Firoz Shah Tughlaq |
| Humayun Nama | Gulbadan Begum |
| Bhavartha Dipika | Gyaneshwara |
| Kitab-ul-Rihela (Safarnama) | Ibn Batuta |
| Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri | Jahangir |
| Chandayan | Maulana Daud |
| Tabaqat-i-Nasiri | Minhaj-us-Siraj |
Famous Books and Authors From Modern India
Modern India produced many important literary works in regional and English languages. Famous authors like Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, and Mahatma Gandhi wrote books on social issues, culture, politics, and nationalism. These works are important for competitive exams like SSC, UPSC, and banking exams, as questions from modern Indian literature are often asked.
| Books Name | Authors Name |
| Commonweal New India | Annie Besant |
| Karmyogi Yugantar Savitri Life Divine Essays On Gita Bande Matram | Arvind Ghosh |
| Kesri The Maratha Gita Rahasya | Bal Gangadhar Tilak |
| Anand Math Devi Chaudharani | Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay |
| Bharat Durdasha | Bhartendu Harishchandra |
| History Of Congress | Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya |
| India For Indians | Chittaranjan Das |
| Rust Guftgur Poverty And Un British Rule In India | Dada Bhai Naurauji |
| Satyarth Darpan | Dayanand Sarswati |
| Neel Darpan | Dinbandhu Mitra |
| India Divided | Dr. Rajendra Prasad |
| Nation | Gopal Krishna Gokhle |
| Som Prakash | Ishwarchadra Vidyasagar |
| Discovery of India Glimpses of World History Meri Kahani | Jawahar Lal Nehru |
| Indian Mirror Vaam Bodhini | Keshav Chandra Sen |
| Hints For Self Culture | Lala Hardayal |
| Unhappy India | Lala Lajpat Rai |
| Young India Harijan Navjivan Hindu Swarajya My Experiments With Truth | Mahattma Gandhi |
| Abhyuday Hindustan Leader | Madan Mohan Malviya |
| Al Hilal India Wins Freedom Gubare Khatir | Maulana Abdul Kalam Aazad |
| Independent | Motilal Nehru |
| Comred Hamdard | Muhammad Ali |
| Tarane Hind Baange Dara | Muhammad Iqbal |
| A Voice Of Freedom | Nayantara Sahgal |
| Kaal | Paranjape |
| Samvad Kaumudi | Raja Ram Mohan Roy |
| Geetanjali Home and The World Gora Hungry Stones Chandalika Visarjan | RavindraNath Tagore |
| The Revolutionary | Shachindra Sanyal |
| Amrit Bazar Patrika | Shishir Kumar Ghosh |
| Divine Life | Shivanand |
| Indian Struggle | Subhash Chandra Bose |
| Bangali A Nation In Making | Surendra Nath Banarji |
| Free Hindustan | Tarak Nath Das |
| Indian Unrest | Valentine Chirol |
| War Of Indian Independence | Veer Savarkar |
Miscellaneous Famous Books and Authors
Having a good knowledge of Miscellaneous GK can help you earn extra marks, as these questions are usually simple. Below is a list of important books and their authors for competitive exams, which will help you stay updated with famous literary works and writers.
| List of Important Books and Authors | |
| Book Name | Authors Name |
| Ain-i-Akbari | Abul Fazal |
| Akbar-Nama | Abul Fazal |
| Mein Kampf | Adolf Hitler |
| Count of Monte Cristo | Alexander Dumas |
| One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
| A Revenue Stamp | Amrita Pritam |
| Death of a City | Amrita Pritam |
| Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Baburnama | Babur |
| Anand Math | Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay |
| Origin of Species | Charles Darwin |
| A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
| Canterbury Tales | Chaucer |
| Ancient Mariner | Coleridge |
| A Dangerous place | D.P. Moynihan |
| Divine Comedy | Dante |
| Crime and Punishment | Dostoevsky |
| A passage to India | E.M. Forster |
| The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire | Edward Gibbon |
| Arms and the Man | G.B.Shaw |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| Asian Drama | Gunnar Myrdal |
| Time Machine | H.G. Wells |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| Le Contract Social | Jean Jacques Rousseau |
| Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come | John Bunyan |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift |
| Around the World in eighty days | Jules Verne |
| Raghuvamsa | Kalidas |
| Avigyan Sakuntalam | Kalidas |
| Shakuntala | Kalidas |
| Das Kapital | Karl Marx |
| Arthashastra | Kautilya |
| Agni Veena | Kazi Nasrul Islam |
| Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy |
| Alice in Wonderland | Lewis Carrol |
| Ben Hur | Lewis Wallace |
| A Week with Gandhi | Louis Fisher |
| The Wild Iris | Louis Gluck |
| My Experiments with Truth | Mahatma M.K.Gandhi |
| Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain |
| A Better India: A Better World | Narayana Murthy |
| The Vicar of Wakefield | Oliver Goldsmith |
| Discovery of India | Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru |
| To a Skylark | Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| Chitra | R.N.Tagore |
| Bisarjan | R.N.Tagore |
| Geetanjali | Rabindra Nath Tagore |
| The Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare |
| Antony and Cleopatra | Shakespeare |
| Utopia | Sir Thomas Moor |
| The Lady of the Last Minstrel | Sir Walter Scott |
| The Moon and Sixpence | Somerset Maughan |
| Far from the Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy |
| A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth |
| The Merchant of Venice | William Shakespeare |
| Romeo and Juliet | William Shakespeare |
| Macbeth | William Shakespeare |
| A Midsummer Night’s Dream | William Shakespeare |
| Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare |
| Othello | William Shakespeare |
| Hamlet | William Shakespeare |
| The Prelude | William Wordsworth |
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Important Books and Authors for SSC CGL
| Book Name | Author Name | Year |
| Tomb of Sand | Geetanjali Shree | 2022 |
| Adam | S. Hareesh | 2022 |
| To Hell and Back: Humans of COVID | Barkha Dutt | 2022 |
| Asoca: A Sutra | Irwin Allan Sealy | 2021 |
| The Bench | Meghan Markle | 2021 |
| Elephant in the Womb | Kalki Koechlin | 2021 |
| Landscapes of Loss | Kavitha Iyer | 2021 |
| Platform Scale | Sangeet Paul Choudhary | 2021 |
| A Death in Shonagachhi | Rijula Das | 2021 |
| Stories I Must Tell | Kabir Bedi | 2021 |
| Ajatshatru | Jaishankar Prasad | 2020 |
| AZADI | Arundhati Roy | 2020 |
| Whereabouts | Jhumpa Lahiri | 2018 |
| Jallianwala Bagh: The Real Story | Kishwar Desai | 2018 |
| A Century is Not Enough | Sourav Ganguly | 2018 |
| My Journey (Jeevan Gamanam) | APJ Abdul Kalam | 2013 |
| Unbreakable | Mary Kom | 2013 |
| The Red Sari | Javier Moro | 2008 |
| The Audacity of Hope | Barack Obama | 2006 |
| The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari | Robin Sharma | 1996 |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | 1988 |
| The City of Joy | Dominique Lapierre | 1985 |
| Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie | 1981 |
| A House for Mr Biswas | V.S. Naipaul | 1961 |
| A Bunch of Old Letters | Jawaharlal Nehru | 1958 |
| The Guide | R.K. Narayan | 1958 |
| Autobiography of an Unknown Indian | Nirad C. Chaudhuri | 1951 |
| Kamayani | Jaishankar Prasad | 1936 |
| Coolie | Mulk Raj Anand | 1936 |
| Indian Philosophy | Dr S. Radhakrishnan | 1923 |
| Economy and Society | Max Weber | 1922 |
| Devdas | Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay | 1917 |
| The Rights of Man | Thomas Paine | 1791 |
| Wealth of Nations | Adam Smith | 1776 |
Fiction Books and Authors for SSC CGL
| Book Name | Author Name | Year |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 |
| Train to Pakistan | Khushwant Singh | 1956 |
| Shadow Lines | Amitav Ghosh | 1988 |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | 2002 |
| The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo | Stieg Larsson | 2005 |
| Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | 2005 |
| Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Adichie | 2006 |
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Díaz | 2007 |
| Wolf Hall | Hilary Mantel | 2009 |
| Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh | 2019 |
Non-Fiction Books and Authors for SSC CGL
| Book Name | Author Name | Year |
| The Interpretation of Dreams | Sigmund Freud | 1899 |
| The Discovery of India | Jawaharlal Nehru | 1946 |
| Business Legends | Gita Piramal | 1998 |
| India Unbound | Gurcharan Das | 2000 |
| Stiff | Mary Roach | 2003 |
| Breakout Nations | Ruchir Sharma | 2012 |
| Unstoppable | Maria Sharapova | 2017 |
| Karmayodha Granth | Amit Shah | 2020 |
Awards-Winning Books and Authors for SSC CGL
| International Award Winners Books and Authors List | ||
| Book Name | Author Name | Award |
| The Promise | Damon Galgut | Booker 2021 |
| The Night Watchman | Louise Erdrich | Pulitzer 2021 |
| Tomb of Sand | Geetanjali Shree | International Booker 2022 |
| The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida | Shehan Karunatilaka | Booker 2022 |
| National Award Winners Books and Authors List | ||
| Book Name | Author Name | Award |
| An Era of Darkness | Shashi Tharoor | Sahitya Akademi 2019 |
| Kabita | Nilmani Phookan Jr | Jnanpith 2021 |
| Mirage & Other Stories | Damodar Mauzo | Jnanpith 2022 |
| Samrat Ashok | Daya Prakash Sinha | Sahitya Akademi 2021 |
Familiarity with famous Books and Authors is a valuable part of General Awareness for competitive exams. It not only helps in answering direct questions but also enhances your understanding of literature, history, and culture. Regular revision of notable works and writers can give you an edge in SSC CGL and other exams, making this knowledge both useful and enriching
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – Famous Books and Authors
Answer:- No. Both Indian and world-famous authors and their notable works may be asked in exams.
Answer:- You can make short notes, use flashcards, group authors by periods (Ancient, Medieval, Modern), or revise lists regularly for better retention.
Q3. Can reading fiction and non-fiction help in exams?
Answer:- Yes, Fiction improves language skills and imagination, while non-fiction helps with general awareness and historical knowledge.
