Meny
  • It is 86 years today since Joyce Carol Oates was born.

    American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...

    Further reading

  • It is 67 years today since Alexandra Marinina was born.

    Alexandra Marinina is the pseudonym of Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva, a Russian author born in Lviv, western Ukraine. Her father, who died in 1973, was a police officer and her mother a lawyer. When she was still young, the family moved to Leningrad (now St.Petersburg) and then to Moscow. She attended an English-language school in Leningrad, and the Rimsky-Korsakov conservatory in Moscow. She...

    Further reading

Sample of Authors

Portrait of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel
1939 - 2003

Spanish author, journalist, essayist and poet. Vázquez Montalbán was born in Barcelona the same year as General Franco came o...

Further reading
Portrait image of Mika Waltari

Waltari, Mika
1908 - 1979

The Finnish author Mika Waltari is considered one of the foremost Nordic authors of the 20th century. Many of his books are...

Further reading
Portrait image of James Herbert

Herbert, James
1943 - 2013

James Herbert from England was one of the best-selling and most praised authors of horror fiction in the late 20th century....

Further reading
Författarporträtt av Banville, John

Banville, John
1945 -

John Banville is one of Ireland’s best known and most prize-winning authors. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 2005, the K...

Further reading