ASHWIN SANGHI

INTRODUCTION

Ashwin Sanghi ranks among India’s highest selling English fiction authors. He has written several bestsellers (The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key) and a New York Times bestselling crime thriller with . Included by Forbes India in their Celebrity 100 and winner of the Crossword Popular Choice, Ashwin has recently also penned a non-fiction title '13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck’.

FULL BIO

Ashwin Sanghi is counted among India’s highest-selling English fiction authors. Till date he has written four novels, all bestsellers, including The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key and Private India.

Ashwin’s first novel, The Rozabal Line was self-published in 2007 under his pseudonym, Shawn Haigins. The theological thriller based upon the theory that Jesus died in Kashmir was subsequently published by Westland in 2008 in India under his own name and went on to become a national bestseller. Ashwin’s second novel, Chanakya’s Chant, a modern-day political thriller with roots in ancient Mauryan history, shot into almost every bestseller list in India within a few weeks of launch. The novel went on to win the Crossword Popular Choice Award. The novel remained on AC Nielsen’s India Top-10 for over two years. Ashwin’s third offering, The Krishna Key, a fast-paced and riveting thriller that explores the ancient secrets of the Vedic age and the Mahabharata, was released in August 2012 and shot to #1 on the A.C. Nielsen all-India fiction rankings within the first week of its release.

Ashwin’s fourth novel was a collaboration with James Patterson, the world’s highest selling thriller writer. It is an India-based crime thriller in Patterson’s Private series and was released in July 2014. The book hit #1 on AC Nielsen’s India Fiction list within two weeks and then hit the UK Top-10 six weeks later. The book went on to hit the New York Times bestseller list. Ashwin has recently penned a non-fiction title, 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck. Positioned as a motivational self-help book, the title has had a tremendous response and has remained on AC Nielsen’s Non-Fiction India List since the past three months. Ashwin is also working on his next independent title, Sialkot Saga, a business thriller with a historical twist. He hopes to publish it by August 2015.

Ashwin was included by Forbes India in their Celebrity India 100 Rankings. Ashwin is an entrepreneur by profession but writing historical fiction in the thriller genre is his passion and hobby. When he isn't busy churning out bestsellers, he works for the MK Sanghi Group, which has varied business interests in India. Ashwin was educated at Cathedral & John Connon School, , and St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. He holds a masters degree in business management from .

Ashwin lives in Mumbai with his wife, Anushika, and his son, Raghuvir. More information at www.sanghi.in

ASHWIN’S TITLES

The Rozabal Line (Published Oct 2008)

On a lazy day in London, a cardboard box is found on a shelf of the SOAS library where a copy of Mahabharata should have been. When the mystified librarian opens it, she screams before she falls unconscious to the floor. An elite group calling itself the Lashkar-e-Talatashar, the army of thirteen, has scattered around the globe. The fate of its members curiously resembles that of Christ and his Apostles in the first century AD. Their leader is not even a blip on the radar of intelligence agencies, yet their agenda is Armageddon. Somewhere in the labyrinthine recesses of the Vatican, a beautiful assassin swears she will eliminate all who do not believe in her twisted credo. She loves to kill… again and again. A Hindu Astrologer spots an approaching conjunction of the stars and nods to himself in grim agreement. It will happen on the very date he had seen as the end of the world. And it’s not far off. In Tibet, a group of Buddhist monk search for a reincarnation, much in the way their ancestors searched Judea for the son of God. In strife-torn Kashmir, a tomb called Rozabal holds the key to a riddle that arises in Jerusalem and gets answered at Vaishno Devi. An American priest, Father Vincent Sinclair, has disturbing visions of himself and of people familiar to him, except that they seem located in other worlds, other ages. Induced into past-life regression, he goes to India to piece together the violent images burnt onto his mind. Shadowing his every move is the Crux Decussata Permuta, a clandestine society which would rather wipe out creation than allow an ancient secret to be disclosed. In The Rozabal Line, a thriller swirling between continents and centuries, Ashwin Sanghi traces a pattern that curls backward to the violent birth of religion itself.

Chanakya's Chant (Published Dec 2010)

The year is 340 BC. A hunted, haunted Brahmin youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold, cunning, calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod, Alexander the Great. Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other, he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire. History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya. But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennia later, in the avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India who becomes puppeteer to a host of ambitious individuals— including a certain slumchild who grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman. Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient Bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive politics and this landscape is Gangasagar’s feasting ground. Can this wily pandit—who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance—bring about another miracle of a united India?

The Krishna Key (Published Aug 2012) Five thousand years ago, there came to earth a magical being called Krishna, who brought about innumerable miracles for the good of mankind. Humanity despaired of its fate if the Blue God were to die but was reassured that he would return in a fresh avatar when needed in the eventual Dark Age, the Kaliyug. In modern times, a poor little rich boy grows up believing that he is that final avatar. Only, he is a serial killer. In this heart-stopping tale, the arrival of a murderer who executes his gruesome and brilliantly thought-out schemes in the name of God is the first clue to a sinister conspiracy to expose an ancient secret, Krishna’s priceless legacy to mankind. Historian Ravi Mohan Saini must breathlessly dash from the submerged remains of Dwarka and the mysterious lingam of Somnath to the icy heights of Mount Kailash, in a quest to discover the cryptic location of Krishna's most prized possession. From the sand-washed ruins of Kalibangan to a Vrindavan temple destroyed by Aurangzeb, Saini must also delve into antiquity to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. Ashwin Sanghi, bestselling author of 'The Rozabal Line' and 'Chanakya's Chant', brings you yet another exhaustively researched whopper of a plot in 'The Krishna Key' while providing an incredible alternative explanation of the Vedic Age that will be relished by conspiracy buffs and thriller addicts alike.

Private India (Published July 2014) By James Patterson & Ashwin Sanghi

In Mumbai seemingly unconnected people are dying, strangled in a chilling ritual and with strange objects carefully arranged with the corpses. For Santosh Wagh, head of Private India, the Mumbai branch of the world’s finest investigation agency, it's a race against time to stop the killer striking again. In a city of over thirteen million, he’d have his work cut out at the best of times but this case has him battling Mumbai's biggest ganglord and a godman who isn't all he seems.

And then he discovers there may be an even greater danger facing Private India. Hidden in the shadows is someone who could destroy the whole organisation along with thousands of innocent Mumbai citizens.

13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck (Published November 2014) The journey of life isn't exactly easy. Some people make it through hard work and talent. Some fall by the wayside. And some people are just plain lucky. They are blessed with bloody good luck! But is it possible to attract good luck? Can we train ourselves to be lucky? Apparently it seems that Dame Luck isn't that fickle. She is well within our reach. In his first ever non-fiction foray, bestselling author Ashwin Sanghi explores that critical, much-longed for element called luck. Through entertaining and informative anecdotes, narrations of personal experiences and vignettes of homespun wisdom, Ashwin gives us a whole new insight into how people can work towards being lucky. It seems that luck isn't entirely the twist of fate that it is made out to be!