Vikram Chandra was born in New Delhi. His first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize. Love and Longing in Bombay was first published in 1997 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has also co-written Mission Kashmir, an Indian feature film. His new novel, Sacred Games, was published by Faber and Faber in September 2006. Vikram Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, where he lives with his wife Melanie and teaches at the University of California. His work has been translated into eleven languages.