Rohinton Mistry immigrated to Canada in 1975, shortly after completing a B.Sc. in mathematics and economics at Bombay University. For the next several years, he worked at a bank in Toronto while taking evening courses in English and philosophy. He began writing in 1983. Two years later he left his bank job to write full-time, completing a collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987).

Three novels followed, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Mistry was awarded the Trudeau Fellows Prize by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2004 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 and was a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize. His work has been published in more than thirty languages.