Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of twenty-seven books, both fiction and non-fiction. His latest books are A Wonderland of Words: Around the Word in 101 Essays; Pride, Prejudice, and Punditry: The Essential Shashi Tharoor; and Ambedkar: A Life.
He is a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development, and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. In his fourth term, he is the longest-serving member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and has chaired Parliament’s Standing Committees on External Affairs and on Information Technology. He has won numerous literary awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Books (non-fiction), Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Crossword Lifetime Achievement Award.