I. Allan Sealy was born in Allahabad in North India in 1951 and educated in Lucknow and Delhi. He is the author of The Trotter-Nama (1988), The Everest Hotel (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998), The Brainfever Bird (2003) and other novels and a travelogue, From Yukon to Yucatan (1994). He lives in Dehradun, where he is apprenticed to a bricklayer.