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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
Melville, Herman
1819 - 1891
American author born in New York. Melville came from a wealthy family, but when his merchant father went bankrupt, he was...
Further reading
Petterson, Per
1952 -
Norwegian author born in Oslo to a working class family with left-wing sympathies. His father was a logger of Swedish...
Further reading
Bely, Andrei
1880 - 1934
The Russian novelist, poet and critic Andrei (or Andrey) Bely was born in Moscow as Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev. His father...
Further reading
Lispector, Clarice
1920 - 1977
The Brazilian author Clarice Lispector was born in the Jewish village of Chechelnyk in southern Ukraine. Her family...
Further reading