Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, which was written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then, he has written over 500 short stories, essays, novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley and A Flight of Pigeons) and more than forty books for children. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.