People like Roopa Farooki

Roopa Farooki is a British novelist and medical doctor. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a Pakistani father and Bangladeshi mother in 1974, they moved to London when she was seven months old. Roopa studied PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at New College, Oxford University, worked in Corporate Finance (at Arthur Andersen) and then as an Advertising Account Director (at Saatchi & Saatchi and JWT), before she turned to writing fiction full-time. She later qualified as a junior doctor and now works for the NHS in London and Kent.

She wrote her first novel, Bitter Sweets, while pregnant with her first child, and renovating a house in SW France. Bitter Sweets was first published in the UK in 2007, and shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers that year. She published her second novel, Corner Shop, in 2008. Her third novel, The Way Things Look To Me, was published in 2009, and was voted one of The Times Top 50 Paperbacks of 2009, long-listed for the Orange Prize 2010, and has been long-listed for the Impac Dublin Literary Award 2011. Her fourth novel, Half Life, was published in 2010, and was selected by Entertainment Weekly (US) as No. 2 on their list of "Eighteen Books We Can't Wait to Read This Summer"; it was also nominated for the International Muslim Writers Awards 2011. Her fifth novel, The Flying Man was published in January 2012 in the UK, and has been longlisted for the Orange Prize 2012. Her sixth novel, The Good Children, was published in 2015, and was featured on BBC Radio Four Open Book. Farooki has also been nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction three times.