Upamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian civil servant and writer, best known for his celebrated work – August, written in English language. It was his debut novel published in 1988. After writing this novel, the author was described as one of the powerful and emerging voices among English writing Indian authors, post Indian independence. Though the author took a satire way to describe things, his writings were indeed thought provoking, and it handled serious issue of administration in India in post-colonial period with ease. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1994. Author of a best-selling novel, he has also penned several short stories, "The Assassination of Indira Gandhi" and "Watching Them", to mention a few. Upamanyu Chatterjee was born on 19th, December 1959 in Patna, Bihar. He was the son of Sudhir Ranjan Chatterjee. He received his education from St. Xavier's School and St. Stephen's College in Delhi. While studying in high School, Chatterjee penned a play, the story which he adopted from a Hitchcock drama, 'Dilemma'. The drama was not published, but won the school drama competition in spite of it caricaturing the school rules and regulations. After finishing his Master's in English Literature from the Delhi University, Chatterjee joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. His professional career not only marked the beginning of his literary career, but also was the source from which he created his characters. In 1990, Chatterjee lived as Writer in Residence at the University of Kent, U.K. In 1998, he was appointed as the Director in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. 

In 1988, he published his first work, August, which help him to achieve international acclamation. He was among the first of the recent generation of Indian authors to find success outside of India. He sketched the real picture of India through his debut work. Since then, he contributed to Indian literature in the form of three novels in twelve years, and some short stories.  His 1993 novel, The Last Burden and the sequel to August, ‘The Mammaries of the Welfare State’ (2000) couldn’t replicate the magic of ‘August’. His fourth novel, Weight Loss, published in 2006 was a dark comedy. Way To Go, a sequel to The Last Burden published in 2010 and Fairy Tales at Fifty, published in 2014 are his other published works. The author mostly prefer to narrate things in a satire way. He is a recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award in 2004 and his novel Way To Go was shortlisted for ‘The Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010’.