Shahnon bin Ahmad (13 January 1933 – 26 December 2017) was a Malaysian writer, a National Laureate, and a Member of Parliament.

Shahnon was born on 13 January 1933 as the youngest child to a peasant family in Banggol-Derdap, Sik, Kedah; his father Ahmad Abu Bakar hailed from Medan in the Dutch East Indies while Kelsum Mohd Saman was a Pattani native whose father came to settle in Malaya from Kampong Poseng in southern Thailand in the late 19th century.

[2] Shahnon's father had been previously working as a staff at the surveyor department, then a postman until the Second World War when the British forces hired him as a clandestine spy.

In 1965, he made his debut as a novelist, releasing the novel Rentong ("Till Ashes"), a drama of characters taking place in a Malay village.

[5] His next novel, one of his most famous ones, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan ("No Harvest but a Thorn", 1966) tells about a peasant family fighting not for life, but for death with nature in the struggle for existence; Srengenge (1973)—which won the Malaysian Novel of the Year in 1974—portrays a village enthusiast and reformer defeated by the ancient, pagan-based feelings and sentiments of his fellow countrymen; "Seluang Menodak Baung” (How the smalls defeated an elephant, 1978), reveals the complex process of peasant consciousness awakening in the course of the struggle for land distinguished by a sharp social orientation, psychological reliability and a wonderful style; and the "Lamunan Puitis" ("Poetic Thinking", 2003) trilogy[6] among others.