Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. He studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford, has taught at a number of institutions and written for many magazines. The first novel in the Ibis trilogy, Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. In 2015, Amitav Ghosh was named as a finalist of the Man Booker International Prize.
Salman Toor was born in Lahore in 1983, and studied art at Ohio Wesleyan university. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, and is now in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Tate, London. He was named in Time100 Next 2021. He lives and works in New York City.