-
It is 125 years today since Yasunari Kawabata was born.
Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer born in Osaka. He came from an educated, wealthy family, but he lost his parents at an early age and his only sibling, a sister, died when he was nine years old. These childhood traumas came to inform his writing. After growing up with his maternal grandfather in the countryside, Kawabata read English and Japanese literature at...
-
It is 113 years today since Victor Canning was born.
Victor Canning was a British author of humorous adventure stories and thrillers. He was born in Plymouth, Devon. At the outbreak of the First World War, while his father was doing his military service, he went with his mother and siblings to live with his uncle in Calstock, a few miles north of Plymouth. This was where Canning fell in love with the English countryside, which features prominently...
Sample of Authors
Asimov, Isaac
1920 - 1992
Isaac Asimov was born as Isaak Yudovich Ozimov in a small town near Smolensk in the former Soviet Union. When he was three...
Further reading
Linna, Väinö
1920 - 1992
Finnish author born in Urjala as the seventh child in a working class family of ten children. His father, a butcher, died...
Further reading
Murakami, Haruki
1949 -
Haruki Murakami grew up as an only child in a traditional Japanese family. Both parents taught Japanese literature and his...
Further reading
Kunzru, Hari
1969 -
The British novelist Hari Kunzru was born in London to a Kashmiri Pandit father and an English mother. He read literature...
Further reading