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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
Pasternak, Boris
1890 - 1960
The Russian poet and prose writer Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow, in an art-oriented family. His mother was a concert...
Further reading
Household, Geoffrey
1900 - 1988
Geoffrey Edward West Household grew up in Bristol where he attended Clifton College in 1914–19. He went on to study English a...
Further reading
Morante, Elsa
1912 - 1985
The Italian author Elsa Morante was born in Rome, where she grew up in the poor working-class district of Testaccio. She...
Further reading
Blok, Aleksandr
1880 - 1921
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok is one of the great masters of Russian symbolism. He combined the early Russian literary...
Further reading