London: Novels of three Indian writers including Salman Rushdie's celebrated work 'Midnight's Children' feature among the top 100 "best loved books" in Britain according to a recent poll.

Arundhati Roy's 'The God Of Small Things' and Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy' are the other novels figuring in the top 100 in the poll conducted by the BBC.

Rushdie and Roy are the only two Booker Prize winners in the list voted by 1,40,000 people.

The list is given in an alphabetical order and starts with 'Nineteen-Eighty Four' by George Orwell. It includes four Harry Potter books, four by Ronald Dahl and other children's books by Enid Blyton, Kenneth Grahame and Jacqueline Wilson.

Their children's books make for nearly a third of the 100 fiction titles. The top 100 was cut down from a total of 7,000 nominations by the voters.

Charles Dickens and Terry Prachett have a very strong presence in the list, each having five titles.

The top 20 authors are to be announced in September or early October, when the public will be asked to vote again to decide which book is the most cherished in this country.

British authors have so far dominated the list, having 66 of the top 100 with Americans coming close second on 20 per cent. Forty-one per cent were published in the last 30 years.

The oldest volume is Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' published in 1813 and Terry Pratchett's 'Nightwatch' is the most recent.

Notable amongst absentees were Ernest Hemingway, H G Wells, Agatha Christie, Graham Green, John Le Carre, Arthur Conan Doyle, P G Wodehouse and Barbara Cartland.

PTI