Ann Schlee was born in Connecticut in 1934 and spent parts of her childhood and adolescence in Egypt, Sudan, Khartoum, and Eritrea. She went to boarding school in England and read English at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1957 she married artist Nick Schlee, brought up their four children, and wrote five children’s novels, including The Vandal, which won the 1980 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Rhine Journey, the first of her novels for adults, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981. Subsequently she combined her writing with teaching, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.