‘Anuradha Roy’s writing makes you want to rush to the Himalaya, see the flower valleys and the bold leopards, gossip with the local cowherds, tend the stray dogs and help out in the author’s wayward garden. In every way a beautiful book.’ Sebastian Faulks

When novelist Anuradha Roy and her husband stumble upon a derelict cottage in the hill station of Ranikhet, they decide it is where they will now live. After the frenetic city of Delhi, Roy is initially bemused by the gentle pace of life in the mountains but then won over: spellbound by the landscape, taken to the heart of their sometimes recalcitrant neighbours and adopted by four mountain dogs and counting. Over twenty-five years, as she becomes accustomed to living among forests where leopards roam freely, she will come to encounter nature at its most fierce, captivating and vulnerable – and bear witness to the destructive impact of global warming on the alpine ecosystem.

Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya is a tender and intimate portrait of a home, a community and a rugged, extraordinary landscape. Written with unsentimental clarity, humour and poignancy, this is an account of profound transformations.