He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of four non-fiction books, a collection of essays and nine novels. His books have won many prizes, and he holds six honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into over thirty languages, and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. In 2018, he became the first English-language writer to receive India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award. In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is married to the writer Deborah Baker and lives in Brooklyn, New York.