Anand Neelakantan is an Indian novelist, columnist, screenwriter, and public speaker. He is recognized as one of India's best-selling authors, renowned for his mythological fiction.

Neelakantan has authored 16 books in English and one in Malayalam, gaining wide popularity for his unique storytelling style that delves into narratives from the perspective of antagonists or supporting characters. His debut work, Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012), based on the Indian epic Ramayana, is narrated from the viewpoint of Ravana. This book is the first in his Ramayana series and was followed by other books based on characters from Mahabharata and Baahubali.

His works have been translated into various languages, including Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, English, Sinhalese, Burmese, Japanese, and Indonesian. Anand has written screenplays for several Hindi television serials, including Siya Ke Ram, Mahabali Hanuman, Chakravarthy Ashoka, Sarfarosh, Swaraj, and Srimad Ramayan. He also contributed to the OTT series TAJ on Zee5.

Notably, his book Asura was included in Amazon Books editors' list of "100 books by Indian authors to read in a lifetime" and has sold over a million copies. Four of his books were shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award. Forbes India listed him among the "100 top celebrities in India" in 2015 and 2017.

Anand regularly writes a column for The New Indian Express titled Acute Angle and contributes travel columns to Outlook Traveller.