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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 Heinrich Böll

Böll, Heinrich
1917 - 1985

German author born in Cologne. Böll was brought up a Roman Catholic in a middle-class family with pacifist and anti-Nazi ...

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Författarporträtt av Celan, Paul

Celan, Paul
1920 - 1970

The Romanian Jewish poet who wrote under the pen name Paul Celan was born as Paul Antschel. He grew up in Chernivtsi,...

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Författarporträtt av Dahl, Roald

Dahl, Roald
1916 - 1990

British author born in Llandaff, Glamorgan, Wales, to Norwegian parents. His father, who died when Roald Dahl was only...

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Författarporträtt av Duve, Karen

Duve, Karen
1961 -

The German author Karen Duve was born in Hamburg. After she graduated from upper-secondary school in 1981, she worked as a...

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