Following his education, he worked with the Parliamentary office of Shashi Tharoor in New Delhi and Lord Karan Bilimoria in London.[2] He also worked as a researcher on the BBC Radio 4 series, Incarnations with Sunil Khilnani, which tells the story of India through fifty great lives. In 2017, he became a full time historian and writer.[3][4] He holds a PhD in history from King's College London.[5]
Pillai is known for his debut non-fiction The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore for which he won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2017.[6][7][8] As of 2019,[update] the story was expected to be adapted into a web series by Arka Mediaworks.[9]Rebel Sultans, Pillai's second work, narrates the story of the Deccan from the close of the thirteenth century to the dawn of the eighteenth century. He has released two more books since, The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin and False Allies: India's Maharajas in the Age of Ravi Varma.[10][11]
List of works
Pillai, Manu S. (2015). The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore. HarperCollins India. ISBN9789351776420. OCLC933390381.