Mahesh Rao has worked as a lawyer, academic researcher and bookseller in the UK. His debut novel, ‘The Smoke is Rising’, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Book Award. His short fiction has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize. He is the author of a collection of stories, ‘One Point Two Billion’, and his novels, ‘Polite Society’ and ‘Half Light’, have been published to critical acclaim. Mahesh has also written for the New York Times, The Baffler, Prospect, Vogue and Elle.