Ambika Vora-Nagino ’15 Draws on Indian and Japanese Influences in Fantasy Series

Growing up in India, Ambika Vora-Nagino ’15 loved reading the Bhagavad Gita, part of the Hindu epic poem Mahabharata. She also loved manga and anime, Japanese comics and animated shows, but she found herself alone in this second passion. Raised primarily in India, with stints in the U.S. and the U.K., Vora-Nagino is a Japanese national of Indian ethnicity. Straddling countries and cultures, she sometimes struggled as a young adult to find kindred spirits.

“Princeton was the first place where I met people who shared my hobby [of manga and anime], since in India those things weren’t popular or known of at all,” recalls Vora-Nagino, who participated in the University’s Japanese Language Program. “One of my teachers, Shibata-sensei, was a huge influence in introducing me to several of my favorite shounen manga and anime.”

Vora-Nagino entered Princeton as an English major with the goal of completing a creative writing certificate. She dreamed of writing a fantasy novel for her senior thesis. The book would combine the exciting plot and relationship dynamics of Japanese storytelling with a magic system inspired loosely by the theory of karma found in Hindu tradition.

During her sophomore year, however, Vora-Nagino switched her major to economics, feeling pressure to choose a career with more stable job prospects. Setting aside her dreams as a writer, she took on extracurricular activities that included the Corporate Finance Club and Business Today, and her senior thesis explored the influence of Abenomics — a set of Japanese economic policies named for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — on Japan’s trade balance. (“Dry, I know,” she comments.) After graduation, she moved to Tokyo for consulting jobs with Deloitte and then McKinsey, earning an MBA from the Cambridge Judge Business School along the way. Nonetheless, she never forgot her book idea.

With encouragement from her roommate Alison Itzkowitz ’15, Vora-Nagino continued to develop the plot. It took shape as a young adult fantasy featuring three teenagers trying to navigate a world divided into chaotic lower realms and peaceful upper realms. They meet as part of a rebel group that brings aid to those condemned to a life of suffering in the lower realms, though their motivations for joining the group differ widely. Before long, the three find themselves caught in the middle of a brewing war between the realms.

Vora-Nagino describes her publishing journey as “a very punishing process where I almost gave up many times and often regretted not pursuing creative writing in school.” Nevertheless, she says, “Writing this book became more of a catharsis and an escape from a corporate job that did get very stressful.”

After more than five years and over 200 rejections, Vora-Nagino signed with a literary agent. Then, in what she describes as a “shocking” turn of events, she sold her manuscript, along with two planned sequels, to Penguin Random House within 24 hours of submission. Just like that, in a not-so-overnight success story, her abandoned senior thesis became the first installment in a fantasy trilogy dubbed The Fifth Realm.

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Publishing as A. A. Vora, Vora-Nagino released the first book in the series, Spin of Fate, in May 2024. The book received positive coverage from prominent “booktubers” on YouTube and a coveted starred review from Kirkus, which calls it “an exhilarating series opener.” The second book, Wheel of Wrath, is due out this November. In the meantime, Vora-Nagino has maintained a career in business, moving from consulting into the healthcare industry.

The most rewarding part of the authorship journey, Vora-Nagino says, has been the unexpected delight of receiving fan mail. “I have a folder in my phone dedicated to screenshots of all the fan mail and fan art,” she says. “I’m extremely grateful to the wonderful fans who created and shared them.”