Meny
  • It is 75 years today since Ken Follett was born.

    British author and journalist born in Cardiff, Wales. Kenneth "Ken" Follett’s parents were active members of the church of the Plymouth Brethren, and as a child he was not allowed to watch television. Instead he read profusely; his first favourite author was Shakespeare. Follett graduated from University College London in 1970 and began to write about rock music for the Cardiff-based South Wales E...

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  • It is 87 years today since Hélène Cixous was born.

    The French philosopher, scholar and author Hélène Cixous is a leading post-structuralist feminist scholar alongside Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Cixous was born in 1937 to a Jewish family in Oran, Algeria. Her father was a Sephardic Jew from a Moroccan background, his mother was a German refugee born in Osnabrück. Cixous came from a multi-lingual family that spoke German, French, Spanish, Ar...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait of Simon Brett

Brett, Simon
1945 -

British author born in Worcester Park, Surrey. In 1949, the family moved to Ealing and a year later to Banstead where he...

Further reading
Portrait image of John Fowles

Fowles, John
1926 - 2005

John Robert Fowles was born in a middle-class family in the Essex town of Leigh-on-Sea. His father, Robert Fowles, dreamt...

Further reading
Portrait of Mo Yan

Mo Yan
1955 -

Pseudonym for Guan Moye, a Chinese author born to poor farmers in Gaomi, northeast Shandong province. His father only went...

Further reading
Portrait image of Pierre Boileau

Boileau, Pierre
1906 - 1989

Pierre Boileau was one half of the partnership (and the brand) Boileau-Narcejac, which can best be described as French...

Further reading