Shehan Karunatilaka, 47, is a Sri Lankan writer who won the Booker Prize this year for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Growing up in Colombo, Karunatilaka studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam and Singapore.

Seven Moon was published 12 years after Karunatilaka’s first novel Chinaman: The Legacy of Pradeep Matthew and marks the first Booker win by a Sri Lankan author since Michael Ondaatje who got the prize in 1992 for The English Patient. He is also the first South Asian to win since Aravind Adiga in 2008 for The White Tiger.