Q & A

Vikas Swarup was born into a family of lawyers in the city of Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad. He attended Allahabad University, where he studied psychology, history, and philosophy. Swarup began his career as a diplomat in 1986, and it would be several years before he started writing and publishing fiction. In 2005, he published Q & A, which became an international bestseller and was translated into many different languages. In 2008, director Danny Boyle loosely adapted the book into Slumdog Millionaire, a film that went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Swarup’s next novel was a mystery titled Six Suspects that was published in 2010. In 2013, Swarup’s next novel, The Accidental Apprentice, was again inspired by a game show, this time The Apprentice. Swarup went on to work for the Ministry of External Affairs, retiring in 2021.

Q and A takes place in India, roughly around the time it was published in 2005. In 1998, a game show called Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? debuted in Britain, with other versions of the format soon spreading to different countries around the world. The Indian version of the show, Kaun Banega Crorepati, began in 2000 and was a massive success, in part due to the popularity of its presenter, Amitabh Bachchan. Starting in the 1970s, Bachchan became one of the most recognizable and successful actors in Indian cinema, helping to define the modern Indian blockbuster, like the films that Salim and Ram go to see together. Additionally, the novel features multiple closeted homosexual characters, with homosexuality often treated as inherently shocking or taboo. In ancient India, there were no known legal restrictions on homosexuality or transsexuality. When and why discrimination began is controversial, but perhaps the most significant moment in anti-LGBTQ history in India was the passage of Section 377 during the British colonial period in 1861, which made homosexual sex a crime. This law remained in effect long after India declared independence from Britain, including in 2005 when the novel was published. Section 377 has since been abolished. Gay marriage remains unrecognized in India, although there is a growing movement to legalize it.

One novel that Swarup has cited as an inspiration for Q & A is David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which is also a novel about unusual coincidences and unexpected connections between people. Other contemporary fiction authors that Swarup has mentioned as influences include J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace), Haruki Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicles), and Alan Hollinghurst (A Line of Beauty). At one point, Ram compares Nita to a kind-hearted “prostitute” character from popular stories—one of the most notable examples of this is the Bengali novel Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, which has been adapted many times in different media.