Kunal Basu

Kunal Basu was born in Calcutta and has travelled widely. He lives in Oxford, where he is Fellow of Green Templeton College and a (retired) professor of the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

He is the author of eight novels, including The Opium Clerk (Orion, 2001), The Miniaturist (Orion, 2003), Racists (Orion, 2006), The Yellow Emperor's Cure (Duckworth, 2012), Kalkata (MacMillan, 2015), Sarojini's Mother (Penguin, India, 2020), The Endgame (MacMillan, 2020), In An ideal World (Penguin, India, 2022) as well as two collections of short stories, The Japanese Wife (HarperCollins, 2008), whose title story is now a film of the same name, directed by Aparna Sen, and more recently, Filmi Stories (Penguin, India, 2023).

Jamshed, the central character in Kalkata (Macmillan, 2015) is a Bihari Muslim and a gigolo – a male prostitute. His story is also a tale of the real Kalkatta as it is experienced by its diverse inhabitants, bursting with vividly drawn people and bustling and dangerous life.

The eight stories of Filmi Stories are about unforeseen terrors and adventures, surreal comedies, the apocalypses and the sublime poetry of everyday life.