Wings of Fire (1999) is the autobiography of Missile Man of India and Former President of India Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam written by Arun Tiwari.
The autobiography examines Kalam’s early life, efforts, hardship, courage, fortune and opportunities. These qualities eventuality resulted him in leading Indian Space Research, Nuclear and Missile programmes.
Kalam began his career at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited after graduating in Aerospace Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology and was commissioned to build a hovercraft prototype. He then moved to ISRO and helped set up the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and became a pioneer of the first space launch-vehicle programme. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Kalam moved to the DRDO to lead the Indian nuclear weapons programme. The particular success in the development of thermonuclear weapons was ended through undertaking Smiling Buddha and the ICBM Agni operation.
The autobiography, which was first published in English, has been translated and published in 13 languages including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi and Gujarati. Outside of the major Indian languages, Wings of Fire has been translated into Chinese (Titled Huo Yi by Ji Peng) and translated into French by various translators.
