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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
Updike, John
1932 - 2009
American author, born in the small town of Shillington in Pennsylvania, where also his earliest works take place, but then...
Further reading
Pindar
c. 518 BCE - c. 438 BCE
Little is known about the Greek poet Pindar (Greek: Pindaros). He was probably born in the village of Cynoscephalae near...
Further reading
Heaney, Seamus
1939 - 2013
The Irish poet, essayist and translator Seamus Justin Heaney was born at Mossbawn Farm near Castledawson, County Derry,...
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