Vikas Swarup, the author of the book that became the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” will become India’s principal spokesman, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said Thursday.
Swarup has had a long career in India as a diplomat before he debuted as a novelist in 2005 with the best-seller “Q&A,” ultimately made into the 2008 movie of a slum kid made good. He’ll start his job as spokesman next month.
Twitter weighed in immediately, of course.
Clever choice to pick Vikas Swarup. He wrote the book on the one thing all foreigners seem to know about India.
According to his bio page, Swarup, who was born in 1963, joined India’s foreign service in 1986 and has been posted around the globe, including Britain, Turkey and the United States. He currently lives in New Delhi and holds the ministry post of Joint Secretary (United Nations — Political). Two other novels, “Six Suspects” and “The Accidental Apprentice,” have followed.
Swarup wrote his first novel in a rush just as he was finishing a diplomatic tour of Britain in 2003, he told the Guardian in 2009. It was written as a thriller, albeit one with searing social commentary about India’s woes of inequality and poverty.
“I’m not one of those writers who wants to spend four pages describing a sunrise. There are so many of them in India,” he said. “I’m a sucker for thrillers and I wanted to write one. I’m much more influenced by Alastair MacLean and James Hadley Chase. I’m no Arundhati Roy.”
Accolades and best-sellerdom followed — the book has been translated into 49 languages. The film “Slumdog Millionaire” won eight Academy Awards in 2009, including Best Picture.
Because Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office has no principal spokesman, the spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs has become the country’s most prominent public mouthpiece since the Modi government came to power in May. Swarup succeeds Syed Akbaruddin, a well-liked career diplomat who will be moving on to a new international posting later this year.