Manu S Pillai

India, Author

Manu S Pillai is the author of the award-winning The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore (HarperCollins India, 2015). Formerly Chief of Staff to Dr Shashi Tharoor MP, he’s worked at the House of Lords in Britain and with the BBC on their Incarnations Indian history series. Written over six years and researched in three continents, The Ivory Throne is Manu’s first book and tells a social and political history of Kerala through the life and times of the last female Maharajah of Travancore. The book won the 2016 Tata Lit Live Prize for best first work of non-fiction and the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. Manu is also text contributor to Serena Chopra’s Bhutan Echoes (Tasveer,  2016), and is a columnist for Mint Lounge. His previous writings have appeared in The Hindu, Open Magazine, and other publications.