Boman Desai was bound for a career in market analysis when a chance encounter with Sir Edmund Hillary turned him back to writing. He had his first break when an elegant elderly woman submitted half a dozen of his stories for publication to Debonair (in Mumbai where he was born and raised)—all of which were published, but the woman vanished and her identity remains a mystery to this day. His second break came when another elegant elderly woman, Diana Athill, published his first novel, The Memory of Elephants, in London. The novel was subsequently published by HarperCollins/India and the University of Chicago Press. He is perhaps best-known for TRIO, a Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms which was awarded the Kirkus star and listed among their Best Books of 2016. The book was subsequently transcribed into an opera, Clara, and may now be seen on youtube.

He revised and republished two novels which were initially available only in India: (1) A Googly in the Compound (a novel of the Raj); and (2) Portrait of a Woman Madly in Love. He also published in 2022 The Elephant Graveyard (a Moby Dick for Elephants), a novel as rich with elephantalia as its predecessor was with whalology, as informed by Melville’s incantatory prose and philosophical concerns, which attempts to understand why bad things happen to good people.

He has also composed a symphony, concerto, and chamber-works available on CDs.

Desai has won about a dozen awards, published short stories, articles, and poems in the US, UK, and India—and taught fiction at Truman College and Roosevelt University (both in Chicago), and the University of Southern Maine.