Manju Kapur was born in 1948 in Amritsar. She graduated from the Miranda House University College for women and went on to take an MA at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and an M.Phil. at Delhi University. Manju Kapur lives in New Delhi, where she is a teacher of English literature at her alma mater Miranda House College. Her first, Difficult Daughters, fetched her the Commonwealth Prize for First Novels (Eurasia Section) and went on to become a bestseller in India. She lives in New Delhi. Manju Kapur speaks for the middle-class and even has been earned several comparisons with Jane Austen for her sharp-eyed, finely turned character portraits who are caught in tricky situations.