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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 Jean-Patrick Manchette

Manchette, Jean-Patrick
1942 - 1995

Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French author credited for having revolutionised noir fiction in France. He was born in...

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Författarporträtt av Sjöwall, Maj

Sjöwall, Maj
1935 - 2020

Maj Sjöwall was a Swedish author, journalist and translator born in Stockholm. Having been married twice between 1955 and ...

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Författarporträtt av Collins, Max Allan

Collins, Max Allan
1948 -

A very productive American multitasker, known primarily as a crime author, born in Muscatine in Iowa. With the exception of...

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Författarporträtt av Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
1749 - 1832

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main. His father, Johann Kaspar Goethe, who had left public service...

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