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  • It is 80 years today since Kjartan Fløgstad was born.

    Norwegian author born in the industrial city of Sauda. He has worked at the smelting plant in Sauda and on a Norwegian cargo ship on which he travelled all over the world, especially South America. His experiences and impressions from this continent would later become highly significant to his work. (In 2004 Fløgstad received a Chilean arts award.) He briefly studied architecture at the ...

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  • It is 72 years today since Orhan Pamuk was born.

    Turkish author, born and grew up in Istanbul, Nisantasi, in an affluent middle-class family. The father was a civil engineer, as was Orhan’s grandfather, who laid the foundations for the family’s fortune. After graduating from school – the secular American Robert College – Pamuk studied Architecture and Journalism. Until he was 22, he devoted himself to painting and dreamt of becoming an artist. T...

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  • It is 67 years today since Fred Vargas was born.

    Fred Vargas is a pseudonym used by the French historian, archaeologist and crime writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. "Vargas" was a character played by Ava Gardener in The Barefoot Contessa; the name was first used by Audoin-Rouzeau’s twin sister Joëlle, the visual artist Jo Vargas. Their father, Philippe Audoin-Rouzeau, was a journalist and a famous figure in surrealist circles. He was very part...

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  • It is 158 years today since E.W. Hornung was born.

    The English teacher and journalist Ernest William Hornung (Willie to his family) was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law. If Sir Arthur was the father of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous fictional detective in the world, you could say that Hornung created the most famous crook, the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles. Like Holmes, Raffles has occasionally turned up in books by other authors.
    H...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait of Norman Mailer

Mailer, Norman
1923 - 2007

The American author, journalist and public debater Norman (in reality Nachem Malek) Mailer was born in Long Branch, New...

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Portrait of Martin Amis

Amis, Martin
1949 - 2023

Martin Amis was the son of author Kingsley Amis and his wife Hilary. He had a younger sister, Sally, and an older brother,...

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Författarporträtt av Munro, Alice

Munro, Alice
1931 - 2024

Alice Munro (née Laidlaw) was born in Wingham, a small town situated in South-West Ontario, Canada. Her family were fox and ...

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Författarporträtt av Brink, André

Brink, André
1935 - 2015

André Brink was a South-African author born in Vrede, the Orange Free State of South Africa. His father was a magistrate ...

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