Diksha Basu is an American writer and actress.[1][2] She is the author of the novel The Windfall which is under adaptation for a television series by Shonali Bose.[3][4]
In 2008,[10] she moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting,[6] and lived in the city for four years.[5] She featured in the comedy series Mumbai Calling (2007) and in the drama film A Decent Arrangement (2011).[6][10] She began writing while in Mumbai, and her debut novel Opening Night was published by HarperCollins and launched in 2012 by Chetan Bhagat.[10] The novel depicted the struggles of an American-born actor who moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting.[10] It was described as a deeply personalised non autobiographical work of literary fiction.[11]
Basu joined the Columbia University School of the Arts to attain a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, from where she graduated in 2014.[3][11] She also featured in the memory film A Million Rivers (2017).[12] In the meantime, she married the music producer Mikey McCleary and gave birth to her daughter in 2017.[13] Her second novel The Windfall was also published and launched in the same year,[7] it was a humorous fiction marketed as a debut novel and depicted the life of a middle class Indian man who had suddenly encountered wealth.[14] It received positive critical acclaim and was signed in for a deal to be adapted into a television series.[9][3] According to ELLE magazine, it broke stereotypes of exoticism surrounding India while according to The Wire, it was a "shrewd and unstintingly funny story about the neuroses of New Delhi's 1%".[1][8]The Hindu gave it a mixed review objecting at its lack of nuance and inaccuracies in social and cultural depictions.[14]
In 2020, she published her third novel, Destination Wedding.[15]
