A lifetime of reading and writing, observation and contemplation is distilled in this comprehensive volume of the best essays, profiles and sketches by Ruskin Bond, the masterly and compassionate chronicler of the small details and luminous moments that capture the essence of a meaningful life. By turns thoughtful, humorous, keenly observed and wise, these essays span more than sixty years of his writing—from reflections on companionship and solitude, to lyrical yet finely honed appreciations of nature, to nostalgic evocations of bygone people and ways of life. As an essayist, he brings to his travel narratives about the major pilgrimage centres of the Himalaya, or the story about searching for the gravestone of a long-forgotten author, the same empathy and sense of wonder that mark his accounts of glimpsing an elusive leopard, or watching the mist rise in a forest of pines.

A Time for All Things contains the finest non-fiction of a singular writer who has inspired and comforted three generations of readers with his sustained, steady and affectionate engagement with life in a world that grows ever more hectic.