Mahesh Rao was born and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. He studied politics and economics at the University of Bristol, and law at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics. In the UK he has worked as a lawyer, academic researcher and bookseller. His short fiction has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Prospect, Conde Nast Traveller, The Baffler, Prairie Schooner, Caravan and Elle. His debut novel, ‘The Smoke Is Rising’, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Prize. ‘One Point Two Billion’, his collection of short stories, was published in 2015. ‘Polite Society’, his Delhi-set reimagining of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, was published to critical acclaim in 2018. ‘Half Light’ is his most recent novel. Mahesh is also a mentor for South Asia Speaks, a mentorship programme dedicated to nurturing new literary voices across South Asia.