Mika Toimi Waltari was a Finnish writer, best known for his best-selling novel The Egyptian (Finnish: Sinuhe egyptiläinen). He was extremely productive, not only writing novels but also poetry, short stories, crime novels, plays, essays, travel stories, film scripts, and rhymed texts for comic strips by Asmo Alho.

Waltari was born in Helsinki and lost his father, a Lutheran pastor, at the age of five. As a boy, he witnessed the Finnish Civil War in Helsinki. Later, he enrolled in the University of Helsinki as a theology student, according to his mother's wishes, but soon abandoned theology in favor of philosophy, aesthetics, and literature, graduating in 1929. While studying, he contributed to various magazines and wrote poetry and stories, getting his first book published in 1925. In 1927, he went to Paris where he wrote his first major novel, Suuri illusioni ('The Grand Illusion'), a story of bohemian life.