Meny
  • It is 112 years today since Julian Symons was born.

    Julian Gustave Symons was a British author and critic born in London, where he spent part of his life. His mother was English and his father a Russian Jew, a stern Victorian patriarch who gave his son little or no encouragement. Symons developed such a severe stammer in childhood that he was sent to a succession of state schools for retarded children. He was close to his twelve years older...

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  • It is 69 years today since Colm Tóibin was born.

    Colm Tóibín is an Irish author and journalist who grew up in Enniscorthy in the south-west of Ireland as one of Bríd and Michael Tóibín's five children. His father was a teacher. Tóibín attended St Peter's College, Wexford, between 1970 and 1972 and graduated from University College Dublin in 1975. He became interested in Spain after reading Hemingway, and after graduation he immediately travel...

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  • It is 63 years today since Gianrico Carofiglio was born.

    Gianrico Carofiglio is an Italian novelist and former judge born and raised in Bari, Apulia. After having passed his law degree, Carofiglio began to work as a prosecutor in Bari in 1986, and he soon became involved in fighting organised crime. He was part of a group of magistrates that tried to take down the local mafia, Sacra Corona, in Bari. It led to the incarceration of a large number of its...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait image of Paulo Coelho

Coelho, Paulo
1947 -

Brazilian author born in Rio de Janeiro. After dropping out of law school he started travelling around Latin America,...

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Portrait of Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh, Amitav
1956 -

Amitav Ghosh is among the most prominent of a generation of Anglo-Indian writers that came to the fore in the 1980s. He was...

Further reading
Portrait image of Pierre Ayraud

Ayraud, Pierre
1908 - 1998

Pierre Ayraud, who published his books under the pseudonym Thomas Narcejac, and Pierre Boileau are two of the best known...

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Portrait of J.K. Rowling

Rowling, J.K.
1965 -

The British writer, J.K. Rowling, was born as Joanne Rowling in Yate in Gloucestershire, England. As an adult, she added...

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