John Berger, novelist, painter, and art historian, was born in London in 1926. After serving in the British army from 1944 to 1946, he attended the Central School of Art and the Chelsea School of Art in London. He taught drawing from 1948 to 1955, and has continued to paint all of his life. His art has been exhibited at the Wildenstein, Redfern, and Leicester galleries in London.

In 1952 Berger began writing for London's New Statesman, and quickly became an influential Marxist art critic. Since then he has published a number of art books including the famous Ways of Seeing, which was turned into a television series by the BBC. Beginning with his first novel in 1958, Berger has also produced a significant body of fiction, including G. (1972), winner of England's Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In collaboration with the Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner, Berger wrote the screenplay for Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000 and two other screenplays. He is also the author of four plays.

For the past twenty years Berger has lived in a small village in the French Alps. Fascinated by the traditions and endangered way of life of the mountain people, he has written about them both in his fiction and nonfiction.