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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...
Sample of Authors
Tey, Josephine
1896 - 1952
Josephine Tey (the author of popular mystery novels) and Gordon Daviot (a well-known English playwright between 1933 and...
Further reading
Sem-Sandberg, Steve
1958 -
Steve Sem-Sandberg was born in Norway to Norwegian parents who spent many years in the United States, which explains his...
Further reading
Elytis, Odysseus
1911 - 1996
Odysseus Elytis was born Odysseus Alepoudhellis at Heraklion on the island of Crete. He was the youngest of six children....
Further reading
Seifert, Jaroslav
1901 - 1986
The Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert was born in the deprived working class district of Zizkov in Prague. He joined the...
Further reading