Kunal Basu is an Indian author of English fiction who has written five novels – The Opium Clerk (2001), The Miniaturist (2003), Racists (2006), The Yellow Emperor’s Cure (2011) and Kalkatta (2015). He has also written a collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife (2008), the title story of which has been made into a film by the Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen. He is the first writer to deal with the opium trade in Indian fiction. This part of British colonial history is often ignored nowadays in British history textbooks.