Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle property in Queensland. She went to Sydney in the late sixties, then returned to study in Brisbane before going to Alice Springs where the events of this book began. Since then she has travelled extensively and has lived in London, New York and India. In the early 1990s she migrated with and wrote about nomads in north west India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.