A native of India, Farrukh Dhondy came to Great Britain to be a schoolteacher. He was able to identify with the growing number of non-white teens who were coming of age at that time. Living in poor areas and ghettoes, these teens both had a sense of hope for the future and a knowledge that their differences made them outcasts. Dhondy has become known for showing the confusion and anxieties of these young people while using accurate descriptions, dialect, and slang expressions to add emphasis to his tales.

Dhondy grew up in a middle class family in Bombay, India, where his father was an officer in the army. As a child, he loved to read, but reading just for the pleasure of it was rarely praised. "The pressure of opinion in the family and outside it was to achieve some form of professional status. Qualifications were the key...