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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...
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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
Simon, Claude
1913 - 2005
Claude Simon was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, where his father was an officer in the French colonial army. After his...
Further reading
Voors, Barbara
1967 -
Barbara Voors was born in Stockholm and grew up in Tehran, Iran, with her Swedish mother, who worked at the Swedish...
Further reading
Grünbein, Durs
1962 -
The German poet and essayist Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in the then DDR (East Germany). The city still clearly ...
Further reading
Zola, Émile
1840 - 1902
French author, born in Paris and raised in Aix-en-Provence. His father, who was Italian and a successful site engineer,...
Further reading