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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
Alexievich, Svetlana
1948 -
Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ukraine three years after the Second World War. She grew up in a village in Belorussia...
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Morrison, Toni
1931 - 2019
American author born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, one of four siblings in a working class family in Lorain, Ohio. During the...
Further reading
Erpenbeck, Jenny
1967 -
The German author and theatre director Jenny Erpenbeck grew up in central East Berlin where she still lives. Erpenbeck's...
Further reading
Boucher, Anthony
1911 - 1968
Anthony Boucher was a pseudonym used by William Anthony "Tony" Parker White, an American editor, critic and prominent...
Further reading