Meny
  • It is 72 years today since Orhan Pamuk was born.

    Turkish author, born and grew up in Istanbul, Nisantasi, in an affluent middle-class family. The father was a civil engineer, as was Orhan’s grandfather, who laid the foundations for the family’s fortune. After graduating from school – the secular American Robert College – Pamuk studied Architecture and Journalism. Until he was 22, he devoted himself to painting and dreamt of becoming an artist. T...

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  • It is 67 years today since Fred Vargas was born.

    Fred Vargas is a pseudonym used by the French historian, archaeologist and crime writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. "Vargas" was a character played by Ava Gardener in The Barefoot Contessa; the name was first used by Audoin-Rouzeau’s twin sister Joëlle, the visual artist Jo Vargas. Their father, Philippe Audoin-Rouzeau, was a journalist and a famous figure in surrealist circles. He was very part...

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  • It is 158 years today since E.W. Hornung was born.

    The English teacher and journalist Ernest William Hornung (Willie to his family) was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law. If Sir Arthur was the father of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous fictional detective in the world, you could say that Hornung created the most famous crook, the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles. Like Holmes, Raffles has occasionally turned up in books by other authors.
    H...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait of John (f. 1926) Gardner

Gardner, John (b. 1926)
1926 - 2007

John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a...

Further reading
Portrait of Iain Pears

Pears, Iain
1955 -

Iain Pears is a British author, art historian and journalist. He was born in Coventry where his father was a company...

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Portrait image of Joyce Carol Oates

Oates, Joyce Carol
1938 -

American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the...

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Portrait image of Stieg Larsson

Larsson, Stieg
1954 - 2004

Stieg Larsson was a Swedish author and journalist who, despite only publishing three novels, is one of Sweden’s b...

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