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It is 125 years today since Yasunari Kawabata was born.
Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer born in Osaka. He came from an educated, wealthy family, but he lost his parents at an early age and his only sibling, a sister, died when he was nine years old. These childhood traumas came to inform his writing. After growing up with his maternal grandfather in the countryside, Kawabata read English and Japanese literature at...
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It is 113 years today since Victor Canning was born.
Victor Canning was a British author of humorous adventure stories and thrillers. He was born in Plymouth, Devon. At the outbreak of the First World War, while his father was doing his military service, he went with his mother and siblings to live with his uncle in Calstock, a few miles north of Plymouth. This was where Canning fell in love with the English countryside, which features prominently...
Sample of Authors
Collins, Wilkie
1824 - 1889
The British author Wilkie Collins (William Wilkie Collins) wrote a series of extremely successful novels as well as a...
Further reading
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...
Further reading
Houellebecq, Michel
1956 -
French author, born as Michel Thomas on the colonial island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. His parents fairly soon lost ...
Further reading
Zangwill, Israel
1864 - 1926
Israel Zangwill was a British Jewish author. His father had emigrated from Lithuania and his mother was a Polish refugee....
Further reading