Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, including, most recently, Friend of My Youth, as well as a work of non-fiction, Calcutta, and collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and a critical study of D. H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the LA Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University. Alongside this, he is an admired singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a celebrated project that brings together the raga, blues and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. He received the Sangeet Samman from the government of West Bengal. Chaudhuri is regularly featured on radio and TV; his version of ‘Summertime’ was featured on the BBC 4 documentary, Gershwin’s Summertime: the Song that Conquered the World.