India, more of a continent than a single nation, harbours many writers using regional languages as well as English, Hindi and Urdu. Here is the guide to the literary scene in the South, covering novels and anthologies in the major local languages; Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu. Each review is followed by an extract for a flavour of the book. Unlike the Indian literature produced in the West by writers like Salman Rushdie or Westerners like E M Forster writing about India, here the exoticism is raw and at times brutal.