TOP AUTHOR SHASHI THAROOR HAS A MOST unusual day job. The London-born, india and US-educated writer is currently in the news for his best-selling fifth book Riot: A Love Story.

Tharoor is unusual in that his other role also often makes the news pages. He is head of the United Nations department of public information in New York, the latest in a string of high profile UN jobs.

Tharoor has been with the UN since the age of 22; and in the 23 years since then, he has worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Singapore, was responsible at UN headquarters for peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia, and from 1997-98 was executive assistant to Secretary General Koffi Annan.

Tharoor's latest novel has topped the bestseller lists in India (outselling Salman Rushdie's new book Fury) and is doing well internationally too. Tharoor was a featured reader at the Internatíonal Festival of Authors in Toronto, Canada, in October.

Riot is based on a true event, the demolition in 1992 of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by Hindu fundamentalists who wanted to erect a temple on the site. In the riots that followed, thousands of lives were lost in the worst outbreak of sectarian violence since Partition.

In Tharooor's page-turner of a novel, a fictional American aid worker is murdered, apparently in the riot. But as the story unfolds, we discover her secret love affair with a local official and piece together another explanation for her death.

Tharoor's track record as a creative writer clearly shows where his natural talents and inclinations lie. He is a gifted author. As a journalist, he has written many articles, short stories and commentaries in such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Times of India, the Indian Express, and Foreign Affairs.

Tharoor's previous books include serious studies of contemporary politics as well as satire. His fourth book, India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997) was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His other books include Reasons of State (1982), a scholarly study of Indian foreign policy making, The Great Indian Novel (1989), a political satire, and The Five Dollar-Smile and other Stories (1993), a collection of short fiction. Another novel, Show Business (1992) was filmed as the motion picture Bollywood.

Tharoor has received numerous awards, among them the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. In January 1998, he was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as a "Global Leader of Tomorrow".