Alan Garner was bom on October 17, 1934, at Alderley Edge, Cheshire, in the northwest of England. He spent much of his first ten years bedridden, suffering from spinal and cerebral meningitis, diphtheria, pleurisy, and pneumonia. As a child, Garner entertained himself with stories inspired by the irregular walls of his room, which he viewed as a fantasy landscape. This period created feelings of resentment between young characters and an ineffectual or exploitative older generation in Garner's early novels. At the same time, the author's constant references to magic spilling over into ordinary life may be an enactment of the wishful fantasies of his childhood.

Gamer put chronic illness behind him in his eleventh year, quickly distinguishing himself as a student and a fiercely competitive athlete at the local school in Alderley Edge and at Manchester Grammar School. Garner went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where...