He knows more (well, almost more) about international politics than Girilal Jain and more (certainly more) about cricket than even Bill Frindal.

At 32, Dr. Shashi Tharoor is the archetypical renaissance man – as much at home listening to classical Indian music dressed in spotless white kurta-pyjama at his parents’ New Delhi home (which he visits at least every winter) as in conservative business suits negotiating with world leaders at his Geneva office in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Dr. Tharoor (he is slightly embarrassed by the prefix, a legacy of his PhD degree which he received in the United States at an age when most Americans get their BAs) is one of the seniormost Indian functionaries at a UN body and his commitment to solving – or at least alleviating – the international refugee problem is deep and total.

Born in London in 1956, Tharoor grew up in Bombay and Calcutta, graduating from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he was also elected president of the union. A gold medallist both at school and university, Shashi crowned a brilliant academic career with a PhD at the age of 22 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University – by far the youngest ever recipient of a doctorate from that prestigious institution. Since May 1978 Tharoor has worked in Geneva and Singapore for the UNHCR.

Though his student contemporaries remember young Tharoor as an outstanding debater and actor, it is with his pen that Shashi really made his mark. He began writing fiction at the age of six, and his first attempt at a novel was serialized in the Junior Statesman before his 11th birthday. By the time he was 13, his short stories had also appeared in The Illustrated Weekly of India and Eve;s Weekly and three one-act plays had been produced on the Calcutta stage. Since then his stories, articles, book reviews and commentaries on everything from world affairs to cricket have been published extensively in India and abroad. He has been an international affairs columnist for Gentleman almost since the magazine’s inception in 1980.

Tharoor is the author of a widely-praised study of Indian foreign policy making, Reasons of State, which was described by M.V. Kamath as “easily the best book on the subject”. His new book, The Great Indian Novel, which recasts characters and events from the Mahabharata in a startlingly original retelling of contemporary Indian history, is to be published by Viking Penguin in England and India this summer.

Tharoor is married to the journalist Tilottama Tharoor, Geneva correspondent of the Calcutta Telegraph. They have twin sons, Ishaan and Kanishk.