In only six decades since independence, India has gone from a place associated with some of the most wretched poverty on Earth to one that, economically, could dominate the 21st century. French examines the cultural foundations that have made possible a stunningly accelerated transformation from listless planned economy to capitalist and entrepreneurial powerhouse.

Patrick French was born in England in 1966 and studied literature at Edinburgh University. He is the author of Younghusband; Liberty or Death; Tibet, Tibet; and The World Is What It Is, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize. French is the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. He died in 2023.