Chitrita Banerji, a food historian and novelist, grew up in Kolkata and received her master’s degree in English from Harvard University. She is the author of several books on the food and culture of Bengal and India. She has written for publications such as Granta, Gourmet, Gastronomica, the New York Times, and Boston Globe, and has been the recipient of awards from the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery. Her work was included in Best American Travel Writing 2006. Before permanently settling in the US, she spent several years in Bangladesh. Her first translation was Arjun, a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Banerji lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.