Shashi Tharoor is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information and a prizewinning author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction.

His most recent book, Nehru: The Invention of India, a biography of India’s first Prime Minister, was a best-seller in India, where his collection of essays, Bookless in Baghdad, has just been published.

Tharoor also headed the Singapore office of UNHCR in 1981–84 and handled peace-keeping operations. A senior advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow.”