Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya was born in Jamshedpur, India. He studied philosophy and politics at Presidency College, Calcutta, and International Relations and Political Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he witnessed the transformative Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe during 1989–90, which left an indelible mark on his creative perspective. His repeated visits to East-Central Europe over the next four years provided him a backdrop for his debut novel, The Gabriel Club (1998), the Budapest and Vienna during the 1970s.