Indra
Sinha

Indra Sinha was born in 1950, the son of an Indian naval officer and an English writer, Irene Elizabeth Phare, who wrote under the name of Rani Sinha.

He attended schools in England and India before moving to Britain with his family in 1967. He studied English Literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge, after which, having failed to persuade the BBC to let him make documentaries, he became an advertising copywriter in London, notably with Collett Dickenson Pearce. He was voted by his peers one of the top ten British copywriters of all time. While working in advertising he translated Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra into English, the first new translation published in the west since Sir Richard Burton’s. This was followed by a monograph on the origins of tantrism.

In 1995 he left advertising to become a full-time writer, producing a non-fiction memoir of the pre-internet generation, The Cybergypsies (1999). His first novel, The Death of Mr. Love (2002), is set in Bombay and weaves a fictional story around the notorious Nanavati murder case which led to the abolition of the jury system in India.

Indra Sinha has campaigned and fundraised for the poisoned citizens of Bhopal since 1993. He co-founded the Bhopal Medical Appeal, which offers free medical care to people affected by the gas and water poisoning. His most recent novel, Animal’s People (2007), is set in the Indian town of Khaufpur, and is based on the Bhopal disaster. Animal’s People was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book). (from British Council)

Indra Sinha lives with his family in Southern France.