is a contemporary British novelist whose work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her most recent novel, You People, was published by McSweeney's in 2021. Her first novel, Gifted, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and won the Nikita Lalwani is an inaugural Desmond Elliott Prize for Fiction. Her second, The Village, was modeled on a real-life “prison village” in northern India, and won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Nikita wrote the opening essay for AIDS Sutra, an anthology exploring the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in India and is a trustee of the Civil Liberties Trust, a human rights organization.