Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and went to Canada at the age of nineteen. His first novel, Funny Boy, published in 1994, became a bestseller and won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. In the U.S., it won the Lambada Literary Award and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. His second novel, Cinnamon Gardens, was shortlisted for the Trillium Award and published internationally. Both books have been published by Penguin India. He is the editor of Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. Shyam Selvadurai lives in Toronto