Vikas Swarup’s spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India’s biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.

Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history–from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal.

Swarup’s Q & A is a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know–not just about trivia, but about life itself. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil–and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive.

There’s a caste system–even in murder. Vicky Rai, the son of a high-profile Minister, has been shot dead by one of the guests at his own party. They are a glitzy bunch, but among them the police find six strange, displaced characters with a gun in their possession, each of them steaming with a secret motive. India’s wiliest investigative journalist, Arun Advani, makes it his mission to nail the murderer. In doing so, the amazing, tender, and touching, technicolor lives of six eccentric characters unravel before our eyes. But can we trust Advani? Or does he have another agenda in mind…?

Former tiffin boy Ram Mohammad Thomas has correctly answered twelve questions on a television quiz show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in prison on suspicion of cheating–for how else could a poor, uneducated orphan know so much: the name of the smallest planet, global capitals, and diplomatic policy? In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which amazing adventures in his street-kid life gave him the answers.

From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood’s rich and famous, Ram’s story is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy, and tear-inducing joyousness of modern India.

Sapna Sinha, an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics store in downtown Delhi, is approached by Vinay Mohan Acharya, a billionaire industrialist and one of India’s richest men. He offers to make her CEO of his company. There is only one catch–she must pass seven tests from the “textbook of life.” Thus begins the most challenging journey Sapna has ever undertaken–one that will test her character, her courage, and her capabilities. Along the way she encounters a host of memorable personalities, from a vain Bollywood superstar to a kleptomaniac Gandhian. At stake is a business empire worth ten billion dollars and the future she has always dreamed of for herself and her family. But are the seven tests real, or is Acharya playing a game driven by a perverse fantasy?

Vikas Swarup, acclaimed author of Slumdog Millionaire and Six Suspects, has written a compelling, suspenseful tale about the lure of money and the power of dreams. The Accidental Apprentice is international crime fiction at its most entertaining.