Anand Neelakantan

Anand Neelakantan is one of India's top selling authors with more than 15 books to his credit.

Anand is also a columnist, screenwriter, and public speaker.

He is known for writing mythological fiction and has authored fourteen books in English and one in Malayalam.

He has also written screenplays for popular television series in Hindi on various GEC and OTT platforms.

He worked for Indian Oil Corporation from 1999 to 2022, before leaving the corporation for a full-time career in writing.

He draws cartoons for Malayalam magazines.

He is married to Aparna Anand and they have two children: Ananya Anand and Abhinav Anand.

His debut work Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012) was based on the Indian epic Ramayana, told from the perspective of Ravana—the first book in his Ramayana series.

It was followed by series of books based on characters from Mahabharata and Baahubali.

His books have been translated to different languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, English, Sinhalese, Burmese and Indonesian.

Anand has written screenplays for popular Hindi television serials like Siya Ke Ram in Star TV, Mahabali Hanuman in SONY TV, Chakravarthy Ashoka in Colors TV, Sarfarosh in Netflix, Swaraj in DD National, Srimad Ramayan in Sony TV etc. He has written the story for the OTT series TAJ in Zee5

Asura was featured in the list of "100 books by Indian authors to read in a lifetime" by Amazon Books editors.

The book has sold more than a million copies across the years.

Three of his books have been shortlisted for Crossword Book Award during the respective years.

His debut novel Asura: Tale of the Vanquished was published by Leadstart Publishing on 14 May 2012.

The book became a surprise bestseller, breaking into the top seller charts within a week of its launch.

His second book was based on Mahabharata told from the perspective of Kaurava and was part of a two-book series.

Ajaya: Roll of the Dice was released in December 2013 and the sequel Ajaya: Rise of Kali was released in July 2015.

Anand Neelakantan wrote the official prequel series of novels for the Baahubali film series.

Titled Bahubali: Before the Beginning, it is a three-book series that acts as a prequel to the films.

He was listed as one among the "100 top celebrities in India" in 2015 and 2017 by Forbes India.

Anand also writes a column for The New Indian Express on current affairs and his fortnightly column is called "Acute Angle".

Anand's debut non-fiction book- The Asura way was published in January 2024 by Jaico books.

He was born in Thripoonithura a village on the outskirts of Cochin in Kerala.

Anand Neelakantan is an alumnus of Government Engineering College, Trichur in Kerala.

He has been writing a column named Acute Angle in the New Indian Express since 2017.

Anand has acted in two Advertisement films and has also played the role of the antagonist Ettappa Naicker in the Doordarshan Television show Swaraj.

He follows the style of telling stories based on the perspective of the antagonists or supporting characters of a larger work.

The first book of the trilogy, The Rise of Sivagami, from the Bahubali: Before the Beginning trilogy, was released on 7 March 2017.

S. S. Rajamouli, the director of Baahubali series, revealed the cover of the book at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2017.

The book became a blockbuster and was shortlisted for Crossword Popular Award 2018.

Netflix has announced a webseries on the book.

The second book in the series, Chaturanga was released on 6 August 2020.

The third book, Queen of Mahishmathi, was released on 28 December 2020.

Anand's debut Children's book, The Very Extremely Most Naughty Asura tales for Kids was published on 28 September 2020 by Puffin books.

Anand Neelakantan's fifth book Vanara, the legend of Baali, Sugreeva and Tara is published by Penguin Random House and is a best seller.

DAR films and KR movies have announced that they have won the film adoption rights and will be producing a multilingual film on Vanara.

Anand's Malayalam work Pennramayanam has been published by Mathrubhumi Books.

Storytel published Anand's first Audio drama, Nala's Damayanti on 14 March 2022.

The audio drama has appeared in 9 Indian languages.