Meny
  • It is 68 years today since Mircea Cărtărescu was born.

    The Romanian prosaist and poet Mircea Cărtărescu was born and raised in Bucharest together with his sister. Both his mother, Maria (née Badislav) and his father, the economist and journalist Konstantin Cărtărescu, were committed communists.
    Cărtărescu graduated from college in 1975 and went on to study literature and languages at university, graduating in 1980. His PhD thesis in literature was on...

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  • It is 145 years today since Freeman Wills Crofts was born.

    Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin, Ireland, as the son of a British army surgeon who died when Croft was still young. Because his mother then married an archdeacon, Croft was brought up in a deeply religious home. He studied engineering, and at the age of seventeen he became an apprentice at the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway where he stayed until 1929 when he left for health...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait of Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh, Amitav
1956 -

Amitav Ghosh is among the most prominent of a generation of Anglo-Indian writers that came to the fore in the 1980s. He was...

Further reading
Portrait image of Samuel Richardson

Richardson, Samuel
1689 - 1761

Samuel Richardson was born in Derbyshire as the son of a carpenter. The family could not afford to send him to school, so...

Further reading
Portrait of James Crumley

Crumley, James
1939 - 2008

The American author and teacher James Arthur Crumley never reached bestseller status. However, he was instrumental in the...

Further reading
Portrait image of Alexander McCall Smith

McCall Smith, Alexander
1948 -

The British author Alexander McCall Smith – called Sandy by family and friends – was born in Bulawayo in the then British col...

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