{ { Infobox person
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Roopa Farooki
| honorific_suffix = Dr Roopa Farooki MRCP MBBS MA Oxon BA Hons
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| birth_name =
| birth_date = 1974
| birth_place = Lahore, Pakistan
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| nationality = British
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| education = Philosophy, politics and economics
| alma_mater = New College, Oxford
| occupation = Writer
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| notable_works = Bitter SweetsCorner ShopThe Way Things Look to MeHalf LifeThe Flying ManThe Good ChildrenThe Cure for a Crime, A Double Detectives Medical MysteryDiagnosis Danger, A Double Detectives Medical MysteryEverything Is True, a junior doctor's story of life, death and grief in a time of pandemic | style = | net_worth = | height = | television = | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | movement = | opponents = | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = 4 | parents = Nasim Ahmed Farooki Nilofar Farooki | relatives = | callsign = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | website = | footnotes = }}
Roopa Farooki is a British novelist and medical doctor. Born in Lahore, she lives between France and Great Britain. Her first novel, Bitter Sweets, was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Award for New Writers.
Early life and education
Farooki was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1974 to a Pakistani father and Bangladeshi mother, who moved to London when she was seven months old. Her father was the late Nasir Ahmad Farooki, a Pakistani novelist and a prominent figure in Pakistani literary circles in the 1960s. Roopa's father abandoned her when she was 13, later marrying a Chinese American. Her mother, Niluffer, later had a long term relationship with an English-Iraqi of Jewish descent. She had a sister, Kiron, who became a solicitor.
Despite being of both Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent, she speaks only English, because her parents were keen on assimilating into London and spoke to her in only English.
She won a scholarship to a private girls’ school, but on the condition she chose arts subjects at A-Level, which frustrated her ambition to become doctor.
Roopa studied PPE at New College, Oxford University, worked in corporate finance (at Arthur Andersen) and then as an advertising account director (at Saatchi & Saatchi and JWT), before she turned to writing fiction full-time.
Once her children were at school, she borrowed books on chemistry, biology and physics from a library, studied them for three to six months, and passed the graduate entry exam for medicine. In 2019, she completed a postgraduate degree in medicine from St George's, University of London, commencing work as a junior doctor in London and Kent.
Novels
She wrote her first novel, Bitter Sweets, while pregnant with her first child, and renovating a house in SW France. Bitter Sweets was first published in the UK in 2007, and shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers that year. She published her second novel, Corner Shop, in 2008. Her third novel, The Way Things Look To Me, was published in 2009, and was voted one of The Times Top 50 Paperbacks of 2009, long-listed for the Orange Prize 2010, and has been long-listed for the Impac Dublin Literary Award 2011. Her fourth novel, Half Life, was published in 2010, and was selected by Entertainment Weekly (US) as No. 2 on their list of "Eighteen Books We Can't Wait to Read This Summer"; it was also nominated for the International Muslim Writers Awards 2011. Her fifth novel, The Flying Man was published in January 2012 in the UK, and has been longlisted for the Orange Prize 2012. Her sixth novel, The Good Children, was published in 2014, and was featured on BBC Radio Four Open Book. She has said this might be her final novel. Farooki has also been nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction three times.
Farooki's novels have been published in English internationally (in the US and Canada, UK, Australia, India, Singapore) and in translation in a dozen languages across Europe.