Prayaag Akbar is the author of two acclaimed works of fiction, Mother India (2024), recently released, and Leila (2017). Leila won the Crossword Jury Prize and the Tata Lit Live! First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Hindu Prize for Best Fiction and the Shakti Bhatt Award. It was developed into a series by Netflix, directed by Deepa Mehta. In July 2018, a new edition was released in the United Kingdom, United States and a number of other territories.

Prayaag has worked as a journalist in a number of leading Indian publications. He was a consulting editor with Mint, a leading Indian financial newspaper, and before that was the deputy editor of the news website Scroll, where he was an early member of the team. His reporting and essays have appeared in reputed publications across the world.

Prayaag studied Economics and Political Science at Dartmouth College and obtained a postgraduate degree in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics.