Being a Hero isn't easy-but it's a lot easier than being a Dark Lord.

Dark forces just aren't what they used to be in the good old days.

The Manticore's Secret is the spellbinding sequel to The Simoqin Prophecies: Part One of the GameWorld Trilogy. Once again Samit Basu creates a mesmeric landscape bursting with weird and wonderful characters and a gripping narrative that's complex, playful, sometimes sombre but always dazzlingly inventive.

A mysterious Dark Lord and his grotesque army threaten all that is good on earth� or do they? The heroic immortals who vanquished his rakshas father long ago have returned to do battle with the forces of evil, which is good news� or is it?

In the shadows a secret society of shapeshifters battles deadly mind-controlling foes who threaten history, humanity and the future of the planet. A beautiful, amoral rakshasi plots world domination while a strangely civilized barbarian fights to save the world.

But the world is spinning out of control. Because the gods are back. And they want to play�

Samit Basu is the author of The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore's Secret and The Unwaba Revelations, the three parts of The GameWorld Trilogy, a fantasy trilogy published by Penguin Books, India. He currently lives and works in Delhi, India.

Born December 14, 1979, Basu grew up in Calcutta, where he studied at Don Bosco School, and later Presidency College, Kolkata, where he obtained a degree in Economics. He dropped out of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and then went on to complete a course in broadcasting and documentary filmmaking at the University of Westminster, London.


The Simoqin Prophecies was written when Basu was 22 and published when he was 23, making him one of India's youngest authors at the time. The Simoqin Prophecies, written in English, has been published in Swedish by Ordbilder, and German (from Piper Verlag). The subsequent volumes in the trilogy, The Manticore's Secret and The Unwaba Revelations were released in 2005 and 2007 respectively. The GameWorld trilogy has been widely well reviewed and all three books have reached Indian bestseller lists but not made a significant impact on international markets.

Basu has contributed to The Harper Collins Anthology of New Indian Writing (2004). Basu has also written short stories for children, which appear in the Puffin Book of Bedtime stories (2005), the Puffin Book of Funny Stories (2005), 'Seven Science Fiction Stories' (Scholastic India, 2006), 'Superhero!' (Scholastic India, 2007), 'Bewitched' (Scholastic India, 2008)

In 2006, Basu published a series of articles and interviews on Indian speculative fiction called The Trousers of Time: Possible futures of Indian speculative fiction in English on a fellowship from Sarai

In 2003, Basu was in Outlook magazine's list of 16 Indian achievers under 25.In 2007, Basu was declared, along with other prominent young Indians such as Rahul Gandhi and Vidya Balan, one of India's most promising 'Emerging Indians' by a survey conducted by IMRB and The Week magazine, India.

Apart from his novel writing, Basu is a columnist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist writing on travel, film, books and pop culture. He also runs a weblog.

Basu is also a comics writer. He worked for Virgin Comics and continues to write comics. His initial projects with Virgin Comics were Devi (#3-#10) and The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma based on the Panchatantra. Basu announced on his blog that he has co-written a comic with X-Men and Lucifer writer Mike Carey.