Shashi Deshpande, daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar Shriranga, was born in Dharwad. At the age of fifteen she went to Mumbai, graduated in economics, then moved to Bangalore, where she gained a degree in law. Her writing career began in earnest only in 1970, initially with short stories, of which several volumes have been published. She is the author of four children`s books and seven previous novels, the best known of which are The Dark Holds No Terror, That Long Silence, which won the Sahitya Akademi award, and Small Remedies. Shashi started writing children`s stories for her two young sons. She recreated her own happy childhood in a small town in her first book, A Summer Adventure, and subsequently wrote two more adventure books. The Naraynpur Incident, her fourth book for children was based on th 1942 Quit India Movement.