Irwin Allan Sealy is one of India’s best known authors. He has won a Sahitya Akademi Award and is this year’s recipient of the Godrej Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award. He wrote the famed ‘The Trotter-Nama’, a debut which established him as a stunning new voice in Indian literature. His evocative mastery of several literary forms is displayed in novels (‘The Everest Hotel’, and ‘Asoca’ which won the Literature Live! Best Book Award in 2021), poetry (‘Zelaldinus’ on emperor Akbar, presented in a cycle of Fatehpur Sikri poems) travelogues (‘Flying Yoginis’ which appeared this year, ‘From Yukon to Yucatan’, 'The China Sketchbook' noted for its pen-and-ink drawings) and social and personal history (‘The Small Wild Goose Pagoda’), which is set in Dehra Dun where he lives.