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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
Seferis, Giorgos
1900 - 1971
The first Nobel Prize laureate to come out of Greece was born Georgios Seferiades in Urla near Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey),...
Further reading
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...
Further reading
Duras, Marguerite
1914 - 1996
French author born as Marguerite Donnadieu in Gia Dinh near Saigon, Indo China (present-day Vietnam). Her mother, Marie...
Further reading
Pattison, Eliot
1951 -
The American author and lawyer, Joseph Eliot Pattison, was born in Philadelphia. He grew up on a farm run by his father;...
Further reading