Manil Suri was born in Mumbai in 1959 and is a distinguished university professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is the author of The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math, as well as three internationally acclaimed novels, The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi. His fiction has been translated into twenty-seven languages, longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, LA Times Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and has won the McKittrick Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among others. He is a former contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, for which he has written several widely read pieces on mathematics, India, and LGBTQ+ issues. He lives with his husband in Silver Spring, Maryland.