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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 image of John Steinbeck

Steinbeck, John
1902 - 1968

American author and Nobel Prize winner born in Salinas in California. His mother was a teacher and his father worked in the...

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Författarporträtt av Perec, Georges

Perec, Georges
1936 - 1982

George Perec's Jewish parents emigrated from Poland to France in the 1920s. His father served in the war and was killed in...

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Författarporträtt av Rothmann, Ralf

Rothmann, Ralf
1953 -

The German author Ralf Rothmann was born to a Catholic family in Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein. He grew up in Oberhausen in...

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Författarporträtt av Carpentier, Alejo

Carpentier, Alejo
1904 - 1980

Cuban author, who was born in Lausanne in Switzerland but moved with his parents to Havana when newly born. His father was...

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