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In 1982, a novel called Memorial do Convento was published in Portugal. A love story set against 18th-century Inquisitorial Lisbon, the novel captured the imagination of many readers, garnering widespread acclaim. Its author, then sixty year old José Saramago, was not known for literature, but for journalism. With this novel, his fourth to be published,…
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Thursday, September 21st marked Stephen King‘s seventy-fifth birthday. Born in 1947 in Maine, King was raised by his mother who, with her two sons, moved several times before settling in Durham, Maine. King’s love for horror blossomed in his childhood, when he discovered a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories in an attic. As he entered…
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Born in April of 1926, William Klein grew up in the heart of New York City, during the Great Depression and World War 2. Despite his economic circumstances, Klein proved to be a precocious student, enrolling at the City College of New York when he was only 14 years old. After joining the Army, Klein…
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September 13th marks the birthday of Roald Dahl, one of the most popular authors of children’s literature of the 20th century. Born in Wales in 1916, Dahl was a first generation Englishman who spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. His famous stories, such as Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and…
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Richard Feynman, born in May 1918, became one of the most well-known physicists of all time. Feynman was born in New York to Jewish parents, though he held no strong feelings toward his faith. He discovered early on his talent for engineering, maintaining a small experimental laboratory where he would repair radios. His practical scientific…
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Born on July 10, 1871 in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, famed French novelist Marcel Proust was born into a France torn by internal conflict. Though Paris was gripped by political turmoil and France’s modernization put pressure on the class system, Proust and his educated aristocratic parents were largely unaffected. Marcel, however, was a…
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Born on May 8th, 1899 in Vienna, Friedrich August von Hayek was a scholar by nature and pedigree. His father and grandfathers either taught or studied the natural sciences and economics. When Hayek entered the University of Vienna, his intellectual appetites led him to pursue courses in philosophy, psychology, and economics. He was hired soon…
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Nikos Kazantzakis, born in 1883 on the island of Crete, had a tremendous desire for truth, a sharp intellect to seek it out, and an adventurous disposition that brought him around the world. His fiction largely reflects his philosophical training and religious values, while his work as a translator reflects his concern for the education and…
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The author of such notable books as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, English writer Virginia Woolf is an established name in the realm of fiction. A pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device, her unique style and method of storytelling has distinguished her as one of the more important…
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One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Clive Staples Lewis, or C.S. Lewis, has become a household name. With such works as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity, his works remain highly influential among writers and creatives, since the publication of his earliest works in the 1930s. Lewis was inspired…
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