Siddhartha Deb is a novelist who was born in north-eastern India in 1970. His first novel, The Point of Return, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times, while his second novel, Surface, was a finalist for the Hutch Crossword Award in India and a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph. His journalism, essays and reviews have appeared in Harpers, the Guardian, the Observer, the New York TimesBook Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Bookforum, the Daily Telegraph, the Nation, n+1, London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the recipient of grants from the Society of Authors and the Nation Institute, and has recently been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University.