Aruna Chakravarti took her master's and PhD degrees in English literature from Delhi University. Her academic record has been a distinguished one, her doctoral dissertation on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala being described as a ‘valuable contribution to Anglo-Indian studies', by one of her examiners. She taught in Delhi University for many years and retired as the principal of Janki Devi Memorial College. Aruna Chakravarti’s translation of Srikanta fetched her the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award. Those Days, a translation of Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Sei Samai, published by Penguin Books India in 1997, received rave reviews and became a bestseller. This was followed in 2001 by First Light, a sequel to Those Days. She has also written a novel, The Inheritors (2004), and has edited a volume of Bengali short stories, The Way Home (2006).