ABOUT ANAND NEELAKANTAN

Anand Neelakantan is an Indian novelist, columnist, screenwriter, and public speaker. One of India’s best-selling authors, he is known for writing mythological fiction and has authored 16 books in English and one in Malayalam. He has been writing a column in The New Indian Express since 2017.

He has also written screenplays for popular television series in Hindi on various GEC and OTT platforms. He has been writing a column named Acute Angle in the New Indian Express since 2017. Anand has acted in two Advertisement films and has also played the role of the antagonist Ettappa Naicker in the Doordarshan Television show Swaraj.

He follows the style of telling stories based on the perspective of the antagonists or supporting characters of a larger work. His debut work Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012) was based on the Indian epic Ramayana, told from the perspective of Ravana—the first book in his Ramayana series. It was followed by series of books based on characters from Mahabharata and Baahubali. His books have been translated to different languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, English, Sinhalese, Burmese and Indonesian. Anand has written screenplays for popular Hindi television serials like Siya Ke Ram in Star TV, Mahabali Hanuman in SONY TV, Chakravarthy Ashoka in Colors TV, Sarfarosh in Netflix, Swaraj in DD National, Srimad Ramayan in Sony TV etc. He has written the story for the OTT series TAJ in Zee5

Asura was featured in the list of “100 books by Indian authors to read in a lifetime” by Amazon Books editors. The book has sold more than a million copies across the years. Three of his books have been shortlisted for Crossword Book Award during the respective years. He was listed as one among the “100 top celebrities in India” in 2015 and 2017 by Forbes India. Anand also writes a column for The New Indian Express on current affairs and his fortnightly column is called “Acute Angle”.

Anand’s debut Children’s book, The Very Extremely Most Naughty Asura tales for Kids was published on 28 September 2020 by Puffin books. Anand Neelakantan’s fifth book Vanara, the legend of Baali, Sugreeva and Tara is published by Penguin Random House and is a best seller. Anand Neelakantan’s children’s book, Mahi-the elephant who flew over the blue mountains, was shortlisted for the 2024 Crossword Popular Children’s Book Award. Anand’s debut non-fiction book- The Asura way was published in January 2024 by Jaico Books.Anand is also a prolific writer in Malayalam and regularly publishes stories in prestigious Malayalam magazines. He lives in Wayanad with his wife Aparna, daughter Ananya, son Abhinav and pet dog, Jackie the Blackie.