Shōhei Ōoka

Shōhei Ōoka (Ōoka Shōhei / 大岡昇平) was a Japanese novelist, literary critic, and translator of French literature active in Shōwa period Japan. He graduated from Kyoto University in 1932 and majored in French literature, publishing a series of essays on Stendhal and translating some of the French writer's novels. Called to arms in 1944 he was sent to the Philippines where he was taken prisoner by the Americans. During that time he set out to write a series of fiction and nonfiction works focusing on the condition of captivity. Indeed, Ōoka belongs to the group of postwar writers whose World War II experiences at home and abroad figure prominently in their works. Over his lifetime, he contributed short stories and critical essays to almost eve

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Shūsaku Endō

Shusaku Endo (遠藤周作), born in Tokyo in 1923, was raised by his mother and an aunt in Kobe where he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. At Tokyo's Keio University he majored in French literature, graduating BA in 1949, before furthering his studies in French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France between 1950 and 1953. A major theme running through his books, which have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian and Swedish, is the failure of Japanese soil to nurture the growth of Christianity. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
(from t
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Michio Takeyama

Michio Takeyama (竹山道雄, Takeyama Michio, 17 July 1903 – 15 June 1984) was a Japanese writer, literary critic and scholar of German literature, active in Shōwa period Japan.

After World War II, Takeyama became famous for his novel, Biruma no Tategoto (Harp of Burma), which was serialized in Akatonbo (The Red Dragonfly), a literary magazine aimed primarily at children, over 1947–1948, before being published in book format in October 1948. An award-winning novel, it was subsequently translated into English under UNESCO sponsorship, and made into a 1956 movie, The Burmese Harp. In 1948, he wrote Scars, set in northern China, which Takeyama had visited in 1931 and 1938.
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Hikaru Okuizumi

1956年、山形県生まれ。国際基督教大学教養学部人文科学科卒業。同大学院修士課程修了(博士課程中退)。現在、近畿大学教授。1993年『ノヴァーリスの引用』で野間文芸新人賞、1994年『石の来歴』で芥川賞受賞。2009年『神器軍艦「橿原」殺人事件』で野間文芸賞受賞。著書に『バナールな現象』『『吾輩は猫である』殺人事件』『グランド・ミステリー』『鳥類学者のファンタジア』『浪漫的な行軍の記録』『新・地底旅行』『モーダルな事象-桑潟幸一助教授のスタイリッシュな生活』などがある。
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John Banville

William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W.B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinqu
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Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki.

Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society.

Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.
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Kōbō Abe

Kōbō Abe (安部公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor.

He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.

Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.

He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. Though he did muc
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Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read today.
Nobel Lecture: 1968
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...
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Shūsaku Endō

Shusaku Endo (遠藤周作), born in Tokyo in 1923, was raised by his mother and an aunt in Kobe where he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. At Tokyo's Keio University he majored in French literature, graduating BA in 1949, before furthering his studies in French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France between 1950 and 1953. A major theme running through his books, which have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian and Swedish, is the failure of Japanese soil to nurture the growth of Christianity. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
(from t
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John Hersey

John Richard Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, earliest practiced the "new journalism," which fuses storytelling devices of the novel with nonfiction reportage. A 36-member panel under the aegis of journalism department of New York University adjudged account of Hersey of the aftermath of the atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, as the finest piece of journalism of the 20th century.
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Christy Brown

Christy Brown was an Irish artist and writer. However in order to do both these things he could only use his left foot. Having been born with cerebral palsy this was the only
way he could express himself.
He was born in Dublin on the 5th June 1932. His mother was the first to notice that something was wrong. But it wasn't until he was just over a year - old that his parents sort medical help. By now
there were distinct signs that he had something wrong with him. The doctors told his mother that nothing could be done. She would never give up on him though. It was through her help and
support that he achieved what he did. Her love and strong belief that he was not totally incapable
drove her onto prove this.
Then it happened when one day he picked
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Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima
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Hikaru Okuizumi

1956年、山形県生まれ。国際基督教大学教養学部人文科学科卒業。同大学院修士課程修了(博士課程中退)。現在、近畿大学教授。1993年『ノヴァーリスの引用』で野間文芸新人賞、1994年『石の来歴』で芥川賞受賞。2009年『神器軍艦「橿原」殺人事件』で野間文芸賞受賞。著書に『バナールな現象』『『吾輩は猫である』殺人事件』『グランド・ミステリー』『鳥類学者のファンタジア』『浪漫的な行軍の記録』『新・地底旅行』『モーダルな事象-桑潟幸一助教授のスタイリッシュな生活』などがある。
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Fumiko Enchi

See author 円地文子.

Fumiko Enchi was the pen name of the late Japanese Shōwa period playwright and novelist Fumiko Ueda.

The daughter of a linguist, Fumiko learned a lot about French, English, Japanese and Chinese literature through private tutorage.

Fumiko suffered from poor health as a child and spent most of her time at home. She was introduced to literature by her grandmother, who showed her to the likes of The Tale of Genji, as well as to Edo period gesaku novels and to the kabuki and bunraku theater. By 13 years old her reading list had grown to include works of the lights of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Kyōka Izumi, Nagai Kafū, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. She discovered a special interest in the sadomasochistic aestheticism style of Jun'ichirō T
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Herta Müller

Herta Müller was born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County, Romania, the daughter of Swabian farmers. Her family was part of Romania's German minority and her mother was deported to a labour camp in the Soviet Union after World War II.

She read German studies and Romanian literature at Timişoara University. In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but in 1979 was dismissed for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. Initially, she made a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons.

Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, and appeared only in a censored version, as with most publications of the time.

In 1987, Müller left for Germany
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Michio Takeyama

Michio Takeyama (竹山道雄, Takeyama Michio, 17 July 1903 – 15 June 1984) was a Japanese writer, literary critic and scholar of German literature, active in Shōwa period Japan.

After World War II, Takeyama became famous for his novel, Biruma no Tategoto (Harp of Burma), which was serialized in Akatonbo (The Red Dragonfly), a literary magazine aimed primarily at children, over 1947–1948, before being published in book format in October 1948. An award-winning novel, it was subsequently translated into English under UNESCO sponsorship, and made into a 1956 movie, The Burmese Harp. In 1948, he wrote Scars, set in northern China, which Takeyama had visited in 1931 and 1938.
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Shigeru Mizuki

Shigeru Mizuki (水木しげる) was a Japanese manga cartoonist, most known for his horror manga GeGeGe no Kitaro. He was a specialist in stories of yōkai and was considered a master of the genre. Mizuki was a member of The Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, and had travelled to over 60 countries in the world to engage in fieldwork of the yōkai and spirits of different cultures. He has been published in Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Taiwan, the United States and Italy. He is also known for his World War II memoirs and his work as a biographer.
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Adalet Ağaoğlu

Adalet Ağaoğlu, a writer born in Nallıhan in 1929, graduated from Ankara University's Faculty of Language and History-Geography, Department of French Language and Literature in 1950. Subsequently, she joined Ankara Radio in 1951, where she worked as a dramaturg, radio theater director, and program specialist following the establishment of TRT. He departed from his post in 1970, having served as the head of the Radio Department. Ağaoğlu's foray into poetry commenced with the publication of her work in the 1948 and 1949 issues of Kaynak magazine. She subsequently made her theatrical debut with the play "Bir Piyes Yazalım" (Let's Write a Play), which was staged in Ankara in 1953 and co-authored with a colleague. The initial work of fiction by
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Maxim Gorky

Russian writer Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков) supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and helped to develop socialist realism as the officially accepted literary aesthetic; his works include The Life of Klim Samgin (1927-1936), an unfinished cycle of novels.

This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
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Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江健三郎) was a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engages with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.

Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
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Han Kang

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

소설가 한강

Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, as well as Human Acts, The White Book, Greek Lessons, and We Do Not Part. In 2024, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
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Anton Chekhov

Dramas, such as The Seagull (1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.

Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.

"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867
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Magda Szabó

Magda Szabó was a Hungarian writer, arguably Hungary's foremost female novelist. She also wrote dramas, essays, studies, memories and poetry.

Born in Debrecen, Szabó graduated at the University of Debrecen as a teacher of Latin and of Hungarian. She started working as a teacher in a Calvinist all-girl school in Debrecen and Hódmezővásárhely. Between 1945 and 1949 she was working in the Ministry of Religion and Education. She married the writer and translator Tibor Szobotka in 1947.

She began her writing career as a poet, publishing her first book Bárány ("Lamb") in 1947, which was followed by Vissza az emberig ("Back to the Human") in 1949. In 1949 she was awarded the Baumgarten Prize, which was--for political reasons--withdrawn from
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Natsume Sōseki

Natsume Sōseki (夏目漱石), born Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目金之助), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.
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Sezen Ünlüönen

1987’de doğdu. İlk kitabı Kıymetli Şeylerin Tanzimi 2017’de İletişim’den yayımlandı.
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Dimitar Dimov

Dimitar Dimov was a Bulgarian dramatist, novelist, and veterinary surgeon, best known for his best-selling novel "Tobacco" ("Tютюн").
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