Sujit Saraf started his literary journey with his first novel, Limbo (1994, Harper Collins, India). His second novel, The Peacock Throne (2007, Sceptre, UK) dealt with India’s socio-political upheavals in the last two decades, and was  hailed as an important work of Indian fiction to have come out in recent years. His most recent novel is The Confession Of Sultana Daku (Penguin India, 2009). In 2010, the Chinese language rights for The Confession of Sultana Daku were bought by Morningstar Publishing, Taiwan.

Born in Bihar and educated in IIT and University of California, Berkeley, Sujit works as an engineer for space missions at Lockheed Martin. He also runs Naatak, a theater company for Silicon Valley’s large South Asian population. In this interview with Zafar Anjum, Sujit Saraf talks about his literary journey and shares his views on the ever-growing Indian writing in English scene.

You come from a successful merchant family. People from such families are known for minting money, not for writing books. How and when did you decide to become a writer?