Monica Hughes was born Monica Ince in Liverpool, England, on November 3, 1925. Her parents then both worked at the University of Liverpool, her father, E. L. Ince, a Welshman, in mathematics and her mother, Phyllis Fry, an Englishwoman, in biology. A few months after young Hughes's birth, her parents left Liverpool so that her father could take up a new position as head of the department of mathematics at the new University of Cairo in Egypt.

Young Hughes's first memories are of Egypt: their first house in Heliopolis, walks in the desert with the nanny for her and her younger sister, and seeing mirages of palm trees and buildings floating in the sky. Later they lived in an apartment in Cairo, with a spectacular view of the pyramids, which they visited on weekends. Her parents climbed the Great Pyramid for the view, while the girls...