Professor David is a Guyanese novelist, poet and academic. He was Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010 and Guyana's Ambassador to China from 2010 to 2015. David also served at the University of Warwick from 1984 to 2017 as Director of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies and Professor of Postcolonial Literature.
Among his literary publications are Coolie Odyssey (Hansib, 1988), The Intended (Secker and Warburg, 1991) and The Counting House (Jonathan Cape ,1996). He co-edited with Brinsley Samaroo, India in the Caribbean (Hansib, 1988) and Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean (Macmillan, 1996). David has also produced an edition for Macmillan of John Edward Jenkins' Lutchmee and Dilloo (1877), the first novel on Indo-Guianese life.