JEET THAYIL is a poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, India’s southernmost state. As a boy he travelled through much of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia with his father, T.J.S. George, a writer and editor. He worked as a journalist for twenty-one years in Bombay, Bangalore, Hong Kong and New York City. In 2005 he began to write fiction. The first instalment of his Bombay Trilogy, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the DSC Prize, and became an unlikely bestseller. His book of poems These Errors are Correct won the Sahitya Akademi Award (India’s National Academy of Letters), and his musical collaborations include the opera Babur in London. His essays, poetry and short fiction have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Granta, TLS, Esquire, The London Magazine, The Guardian and The Paris Review, among other venues. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets. Jeet Thayil’s latest collection of poetry is I’ll Have it Here, and his new novel, Melanin, is forthcoming.