Akhil Sharma was born in Delhi and immigrated to the United States with his family at eight. He went to school in New Jersey, where he struggled with racism. His family suffered a lifelong misfortune when his brother slipped into coma after a pool accident, impacting the family for the rest of their lives. Sharma studied Public Policy at Princeton University but went on to attend a writing program at Stanford University. Finally, he settled as an Assistant Professor to teach creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark. He published his first novel, An Obedient Father, in 2000. For this, he won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award in 2001. His second novel, Family Life, was published in 2014 and won the Folio Prize in 2015 and the International Dublin Literary Award in 2016. He also published short stories over the years.