Anuradha Roy, the only Indian on the Man Booker Prize 2015 longlist

Anuradha Roy doesn't think nationalities have anything to do with literature—and yet, she cannot help fielding questions about how it feels to be the only Indian on the Man Booker Prize 2015 longlist, which was announced on July 29. 

Roy makes it to the list with her third novel, Sleeping on Jupiter (Hachette India), which is set in a fictional Indian temple town with dark underpinnings.

"It feels surreal, I keep thinking it must be a mistake and they'll tell me that in the next five minutes," says Roy. The humility is disarming for someone who has previously been the recipient of The Economist Crossword Prize for The Folded Earth (2011), which was also nominated for the Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature  and the Hindu Literary Award.

Announced by a panel of five judges who picked 13 books from over 150, the longlist also features Man Booker Prize-winning Irish author Anne Enright and the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Anne Tyler, among others. The shortlist of six books will be revealed on September 15 and the final winner on October 13.

Vogue speaks with author, editor and journalist Anuradha Roy—who, rather unsurprisingly, has often been asked if she's related to Arundhati Roy—and tells you five things you need to know about her.

1. Roy comes from a family of literature lovers

We asked her about a writerly quirk—one her friends and family tease her about—and Roy says she's grateful that her eccentricities are usually disregarded. "Fortunately, my family has many people in writing and publishing so they don't pay any attention to my oddities, she says.

2. She has co-founded a publishing house

Roy and her husband Rukun Advani started the publishing house, Permanent Black, 15 years ago. "We publish mainly [books about] history and politics and are one of the best independent presses in South Asia," she says. "I design all our book covers, while Rukun does the publishing."

3. If you were to rummage through her bookshelf, you'd find tons of crime fiction

Roy is currently reading John Bradshaw's Defence of Dogs, Sarah Waters' Paying Guest and Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, but crime fiction—especially by Karin Fossum and Henning Mankell—holds a sacred place on her bookshelf. "They combine fabulous storytelling with thought-provoking writing," she says.

4. Whenever she wants a dose of calm, she re-reads The Sound of the Mountain

We all have books that we keep returning to. For Roy, The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, when re-read in parts, gives her "a dose of calm…profound brilliance". She also revisits Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. "Each one has something that draws me back to it again and again," she adds.

5. In an alternate universe, Roy takes to the wheel

Sleeping on Jupiter is a book "about people in search of a different universe". (One character dreams of sleeping on Jupiter under its sixteen moons.) Alongside being a writer and editor, Roy's own alternate universes involve pottery and painting.