There's an interesting detail about noted author Ashok Banker's life, which hasn't been revealed before. Now, close on the heels of the release of his new historical fiction, Ashoka: Lion of Maurya (Westland), the writer tells us that it's not coincidental that he was named after the great Indian emperor. "My mother chose to give me a name that captured the ambiguity of my identity," he says, in an email interview from his new home in Los Angeles.

Over the years, Banker, 52, has been able to piece together the story behind the name that he came to be identified with. "I was born into an Anglo-Indian Catholic family. My Irish grandmother (who was white, raised in Sri Lanka and held a British passport) and Irish-Portugese mother raised me. My Hindu father was out of the picture and was a father only in the biological and legal sense.