/ Vikas Swarup

Vikas Swarup

Vikas Swarup is an Indian diplomat who has served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia, Great Britain and South Africa. It is however, for his book Q & A – which has been made into the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire - that he is best known.

Q & A, Swarup's first novel, tells the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, a penniless waiter from Mumbai who finds himself in a prison cell for answering twelve questions correctly on the game show 'Who Will Win a Billion?' Because he is a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school, everyone assumes that he can't possibly know the name of the President of America, or the location of the Pyramids, or the plays of Shakespeare. Unless he cheated... Q & A was shortlisted for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and won both the South African Exclusive Books Boeke Prize in 2006 and the Paris Book Fair's Reader's Prize, the Prix Grand Public, in 2007. It was also voted the Most Influential Book of 2008 in Taiwan.

The film version of Q & A, Slumdog Millionaire, was directed by Danny Boyle, and walked away with 70 awards including four Golden Globes, 11 BAFTA nominations and a staggering 10 Oscar nominations.

Swarup's second novel, Six Suspects, was published in 2008. In this elaborate mystery we join Arun Advani, India's best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of six murder suspects unravel before our eyes: a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Gandhi overnight; an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress; a stone-age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred stone; a Bollywood sex-symbol with a guilty secret; a mobile-phone thief who dreams big; and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger.

Vikas Swarup also published a short story 'A Great Event' in The Children's Hours: Stories of Childhood, a bold and moving anthology of stories about childhood to support Save the Children and raise the awareness for its fight to end violence against children.

Biographical details

Vikas Swarup was born in Allahabad, India, into a family of lawyers. After finishing school he attended Allahabad University where he studied History, Psychology and Philosophy. He also made his mark as a champion debater, winning National level competitions. In 1986, after graduating with distinction, Swarup joined the Indian Foreign Service, motivated by an interest in international relations and a desire to explore different cultures.

Swarup has been posted to various countries, including Turkey (1987-1990), the United States (2000-2003), Ethiopia (1997-2000) and the United Kingdom (2000-2003). Since August 2006 he has been posted in Pretoria as India's Deputy High Commissioner.

He has participated in the Oxford Literary Festival, the Turin International Book Fair, the Auckland Writers' Conference, the Sydney Writers' Festival, the Kitab Festival in New Delhi, the St. Malo International Book & Film Festival in France, the 'Words on Water' Literary Festival at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Apart from reading, Vikas enjoys listening to music and playing cricket, tennis and table tennis. His wife, Aparna, is an artist who has held exhibitions in India and abroad. They have two sons, Aditya and Varun.