The Lamp Is Lit

Autobiographical sketches and stories from India's best-loved writer in English. For over six decades now by way of innumerable short stories essays poems and novels Ruskin Bond has championed simplicity and quietude in life and in art. This collection of essays and episodes from his journals is in his own words a celebration of my survival as a freelance'. His early forays into the literary magazines of the 1950s and '60s are described in the first part of the book along with some examples of his work at the time. With understated humour and compassion Ruskin records the charming eccentricities of friends and acquaintances (a former princess cheerfully obsessed with death and disaster) the silent miracles of nature (New moon in a purple sky') life's little joys (the smell of onions frying) and its fleeting regrets. Nostalgic and heart-warming full of wisdom and charm The Lamp is Lit opens a window to fascinating glimpse into the life of our very own resident Wordsworth in prose. About the Author Ruskin Bond's 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 several novels (including Vagrants in the Valley A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far) essays poems and children's books many of which have been published by Penguin India.He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.