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Named by Harold Bloom as one of the four great American novelists of his time (alongside Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, and Don DeLillo), Cormac McCarthy published twelve novels over the course of his lifetime, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western and post-apocalyptic genres. Economic in style, his fiction was dark and often violent, featuring characters who,…
Read More >American journalist and novelist Ernest Hemingway‘s legacy to American literature lies in his economical and understated writing style, which he termed the “iceberg theory” and writers who came after him either attempted to emulate or avoid. After his reputation was established with the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway essentially became the spokesperson for…
Read More >Born in the fall of 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald’s struggles in love, work, and fame became the fundamental motifs and themes of his novels. Despite the losses he suffered, the success of his novels in the years following his early death immortalized his…
Read More >In celebration of International Women’s Day, we invite you to browse some of the most notable works by female authors that have graced our bookshelves in recent years: First published in 1818, Frankenstein is not only the “most famous English horror novel” but also, by some critics’ reckoning, “the first genuine science fiction…
Read More >Miss Jane Austen, born in late 1775, lived a life of relative obscurity. Now revered as an exceptional English novelist, Austen’s work provides a thorough social commentary on the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen’s plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social…
Read More >Born in the mid-1700s in relative poverty, Alexander Hamilton rose to prominence as one of America’s founding fathers and the first treasury secretary of the United States. He founded the nation’s financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, the New York Post newspaper, and he was the main author of the economic…
Read More >Ayn Rand, born in 1905 as Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, was a Russian-born American writer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1925. Upon gaining permanent residency in 1929, she became a famous novelist and philosopher. Her analysis of the human condition and the role of reason in human affairs made her books of lasting influence on…
Read More >Born in Ireland in 1882, James Joyce is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. His novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness and his other well-known works include A…
Read More >John le Carré, born in October of 1931 as David John Moore Cornwell, was a British intelligence officer and and novelist during the latter half of the 20th century. After serving in British intelligence during the 1950s and 60s, le Carré‘s fame as a novelist in post-war Britain was established with his third novel, The…
Read More >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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