J. M. Coetzee is a South African writer, essayist, and translator, widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature. His works, often characterized by their austere pr…
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor whose literary work has had a profound impact on how the world understands the Holocaust and its aftermath. Born in Turin in 19…
Vladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Pete…
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such ph…
Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. He went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but …
George Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at…
Monica Ali is a British writer of Bangladeshi origin. She is the author of Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Ali was voted Granta's Best …
Julio Cortázar, born Julio Florencio Cortázar Descotte, was an Argentine author of novels and short stories. He influenced an entire generation of Latin American writers from Mexico to Argentina, and …
Javier Marías was a Spanish novelist, translator, and columnist. His work has been translated into 42 languages. Born in Madrid, his father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisone…
Ágota Kristóf was a Hungarian writer, who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook (1986). She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller…
Arno Schmidt, in full Arno Otto Schmidt, (born January 18, 1914, Hamburg-Hamm, Germany—died June 3, 1979, Celle), novelist, translator, and critic, whose experimental prose established him as the pree…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
Dopo il diploma in ragioneria ha lavorato in Algeria, Iraq e Francia. Tornato in Italia ha conseguito la laurea in Lingua e Letteratura Russa presso l'Università di Parma, con una tesi sulla poesia di…
Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's …
Kazys Binkis was born on November 4, 1893 in the village of Gudeliai in the district of Biržai. He attended primary school at Papilys, graduating in 1908; he studied at the Saulė (The Sun), taking cou…
Andrei Platonov, August 28, 1899 – January 5, 1951, was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his work…