Dr Shashi Tharoor is an author, politician, and former international civil servant. He is the bestselling author of nineteen books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the path-breaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989) and An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (2016) which won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ramnath Goenka Award. He is a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, a former Minister of State in the Government of India, and a three-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram.