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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 Octavio Paz

Paz, Octavio
1914 - 1998

Octavio Paz is regarded as one of the foremost authors of the 20th century. He was born in Mixcoac near Mexico City the...

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Portrait image of Josephine Tey

Tey, Josephine
1896 - 1952

Josephine Tey (the author of popular mystery novels) and Gordon Daviot (a well-known English playwright between 1933 and...

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Författarporträtt av Lagerlöf, Selma

Lagerlöf, Selma
1858 - 1940

Selma Ottiliana Lovisa Lagerlöf was born as the fifth of six children at Mårbacka farm in Östra Ämtervik parish, Värmland pro...

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Portrait of Maureen O'Brien

O'Brien, Maureen
1943 -

Maureen O’Brien is an English actress and author from Merseyside, United Kingdom. She was born in Liverpool, where she l...

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