Nayantara Sahgal is a journalist and the author of over a dozen novels. She won India’s highest literary honour, the Sahitya Akademi award, in 1986 which she returned in 2015 to protest “increasing intolerance… and (for) supporting right to dissent in the country”. Born in 1927, she is the daughter of Vijaylakshmi Pandit who was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, a diplomat, and sister of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.