Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay was born in 1935 in present-day Bangladesh. He earned a Master's degree from Calcutta University and worked for some time as a schoolteacher before becoming a journalist and author. The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is a much-loved contemporary classic in Bengali, and was adapted into the film Goynar Baksho in 2013. The first English translation was published in India in 2017.

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English. Over 45 of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, he has also won the Muse India award for translation and been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He is the Books editor of Scroll.in, and teaches at Ashoka University. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, and lives and writes in New Delhi.