Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar. She is a teacher of English literature at Miranda House College, Delhi University, and has four children. Researching and writing Difficult Daughters, her first novel, took her five years.

Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, this is the story of a woman torn between family duty, the desire for education, and illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor--a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.
Difficult Daughters was short-listed for the Crossword Book Award in India.