Looking back over almost seven decades, Temsula Ao writes with searing honesty about her extraordinary life, from a childhood marked by deprivation and loss to becoming the remarkable writer that she now is.

Born in 1945 in the Assamese town of Jorhat, Temsula lost both her parents in quick succession. Left to fend for themselves, she and her five siblings spent much of their time playing truant and running wild. When she was sent away to an English-medium school, she soon realized that the only way to deal with her bleak and uncertain future was by studying hard.

She describes her memoir as an attempt to exorcise my own personal ghosts from a fractured childhood . Ultimately, this powerful and moving account is a rumination on love and what it means to be deprived of it.

"Once Upon a Life" is the story of a woman who faced seemingly insurmountable odds and who, through sheer grit and self-belief, managed not only to build a distinguished career, first as Director of the Northeast Zone Cultural Centre, and then Dean of Humanities and Education at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong but also to become one of the country s finest writers

"