Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2008 archive

2008

Week 1

Doris Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York) is an award-winning American author and historian. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. Goodwin won the 2005 Lincoln Prize (for best book about the American Civil War) for Team of Rivals, a book about Abraham Lincoln's Presidential Cabinet. She is currently a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission advisory board.

Week 2

Faiz Ahmed Faiz (فيض احمد فيض), (1984 - 1911) was a Pakistani poet considered to be one of the most famous modern Urdu poets. He was born in Sialkot, in the Punjab of pre-independence India (now Pakistan). After the partition of 1947, he decided to live in Pakistan, and died in Lahore. Faiz was a member of the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind (Progressive Writers' Movement), and an avowed Marxist. In 1962 he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.

In the 1930s Faiz Ahmed Faiz married Alys Faiz, a British woman. They had two daughters. Alys Faiz's influence on Faiz's life and poetry is reputed to have been great.

Week 3

Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫, Mishima Yukio) was the public name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威, Hiraoka Kimitake, January 14, 1925–November 25, 1970), a Japanese author and playwright. In 1946, Mishima began his first novel, Tōzoku (Thieves), a story about two young members of the aristocracy drawn towards suicide. It was published in 1948, placing Mishima in the ranks of the Second Generation of Postwar Writers. He followed with Kamen no Kokuhaku (Confessions of a Mask), a semi-autobiographical account of a young latent homosexual who must hide behind a mask in order to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24.

Week 4

Marie-Henri Beyle (January 23, 1783 – March 23, 1842), better known by his penname Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).

Week 5

Jaishankar Prasad (January 30, 1889 - January 14, 1937) (Hindi: जयशंकर प्रसाद) was one of the most famous figures in modern Hindi literature. He was a dramatist, novelist, poet and story-writer. Prasad belonged to the Chhayavaadi school of Hindi poetry. His most famous work is Kamayani.

Week 6

Charles Dickens FRSA (/ˈtʃɑːrlz ˈdɪkɪnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime.