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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
Wolf, Christa
1929 - 2011
The German author Christa Wolf was born as Christa Ihlenfeld in Landsberg ab der Warthe (present-day Gorzów Wielkopolski in ...
Further reading
Bowles, Paul
1910 - 1999
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American author, translator and composer born in Queens, New York. He was the only child of...
Further reading
Walcott, Derek
1930 - 2017
Derek Walcott was born in Castries on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. His father was a civil servant who painted and...
Further reading
Leon, Donna
1942 -
The American crime writer Donna Leon was born in Montclaire, New Jersey. At the age of twenty-three, she published her...
Further reading