Kamala Markandaya was a pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist. Born in Bangalore, India in 1924, Markandaya was educated at the University of Madras in Chennai, India, and worked briefly for a weekly newspaper before emigrating to England in 1948. There she met her husband, with whom she lived in London. Nectar in a Sieve, her first novel, was published in 1954. She died in England in 2004.