Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehra Dun, New Delhi and Simla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over three hundred short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), and more than fifty books for children.