Innate inside Bombay, India, Mistry immigrated to Canada in 1975. When attending a University of Toronto he won two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine's annual Contributor's Prize for 1985.

Both years late, Penguin Books Canada published his collection of 11 short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag.

Whenever his number one novel, Such an extended Journey, was published within 1991, it won the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize and for the Trillium Award. It has been translated into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese, and has been mass produced into a 1998 film Such a Long Journey.

Within 2002, Mistry cancelled his United States book tour because he and his married woman were targeted by security professionals at each airport he visited, apparently because of his "Middle Eastern" appearance. Mistry reported that in his number 1 flight of the tour, "we were greeted by a ticket agent who cheerfully told us we had been selected randomly for a special security check. Then it began to happen at every single stop, at every single airport. The random process took on a 100 percent certitude." His publisher issued the statement that said, "As a person of color (Mistry) was stopped repeatedly and rudely at each airport along the way—to the point where the humiliation ... had become unbearable."

He is at present the resident of Brampton, Ontario.

Bibliography
Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987) Such a Long Journey (1991) A Fine Balance (1996) Family Matters (2002)

Awards and recognition
1983 1st Prize, Hart Home Literary Contest: "One Sunday" (short story) 1984 Number 1 Prize, Hart Home Literary Contest: "Auspicious Occasion" (short story) 1985 Annual Contributors' Prime, American Fiction Magazine 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist): Such a Long Journey 1991 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction (Canada): Such a Long Journey 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book): Such an extended Journey 1992 Books in Canada First Novel Award: Such a Long Journey 1995 Giller Prize (Canada): A Ticket Balance 1996 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist): The Amercement Balance 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Better Book): The Ticket Balance 1997 Irish Days International Fiction Prize (shortlist): The Mulct Balance 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) (shortlist): Personal Matters 2002 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize (joint winner sustaining Pascal Khoo Thwe): Family Matters 2002 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist): Personal Matters

Mistry's novel The Mulct Balance was chosen per Oprah Winfrey's Book Club No.44. It was too one of a selected books in the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, championed by actor Megan Follows.