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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
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
Silone, Ignazio
1900 - 1978
The pseudonym of Secondo Tranquilli, an Italian author and intellectual, born in Pescina dei Marsi. Silone came from a poor...
Further reading
Riverton, Stein
1884 - 1934
The Norwegian author Sven Elvestad, best known as Stein Riverton, his pen name, was one of Norway’s foremost early 20th c...
Further reading
Blackwood, Algernon
1869 - 1951
The British author Algernon Henry Blackwood grew up in a strictly religious home in Kent. He soon abandoned his Christian...
Further reading