Alka Joshi, the New York Times best-selling author of ‘The Henna Artist’ published in March, 2020, is on a roll with the book now its way to becoming a Netflix series. Add to that her having just published the third and final novel in her Jaipur trilogy ‘The Perfumist of Paris’ and already onto a fourth new novel, and you get a measure of how rapidly she has gained international fame.

The second in the trilogy ‘The Secret Keeper of Jaipur’ was published in June 2021. Joshi started writing at the relatively late age of 51 but says she would not have been able to produce the trilogy in her 20s, 30s or even 40s without the experience age has given her and brought with it an ever broadening literary and intellectual horizon.

‘The Perfumist of Paris’, according to the blurb, “takes readers to 1970s Paris where Radha’s budding career as a perfumer must compete with the demands of her family and the secrets of her past.”

Alka Joshi spoke to Mayank Chhaya Reports from Monterey, California where she lives.