The Paradoxical Prime Minister About the Author Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of seventeen previous books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include the path-breaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989), the classic India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997) and the No. 1 bestsellers, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (2016), for which he won a Ramnath Goenka Award and Why I Am a Hindu (2018). He has won numerous literary awards for his work, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Tharoor was a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. He is a two-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and chairs Parliament’s External Affairs committee. He was honored with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India’s highest award for overseas Indians, in 2004 and was chosen New Age Politician of the Year by NDTV in 2010.