Mahesh Rao grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked as a lawyer, academic researcher and bookseller. 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, the Crossword Book Award and the Guardian‘s Not the Booker Prize. His short fiction has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize. Mahesh has written for the New York Times, The Baffler, Prospect and Elle. He lives most of the year in Mysore, India.