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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
Laxness, Halldór
1902 - 1998
Icelandic author born in Reykjavik as Halldór Guðjónsson. When he was three years old his parents, Guðjón Helgason and Sigr...
Further reading
Lundberg, Ulla-Lena
1947 -
The Finnish-Swedish author Ulla-Lena Lundberg spent the first years of her life on the island of Kökar in the Åland a...
Further reading
Tóibin, Colm
1955 -
Colm Tóibín is an Irish author and journalist who grew up in Enniscorthy in the south-west of Ireland as one of Bríd and Mi...
Further reading
Aymé, Marcel
1902 - 1967
French author born in the town of Joigny, Burgundy, as the youngest of six children. His father was a cavalry farrier. His...
Further reading