Patrick Süskind was born in Ambach, near Munich, in 1949. He studied medieval and modern history at the University of Munich. His first play, The Double Bass, was written in 1980 and became an international success. It was performed in Germany, in Switzerland, at the Edinburgh Festival, in London, and at the New Theatre in Brooklyn. His first novel, The Parfume became an internationally acclaimed bestseller. He is also the author of The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story, and a coauthor of the enormously successful German television series Kir Royal. Mr. Süskind lives and writes in Munich.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide.
In the 1960s he was taken up by many members of the nascent "counter-culture" largely because of his concern with environmental issues. In 1997 he came top of three British polls, organised respectively by Channel 4 / Waterstone's, the Folio Society, and SFX, the UK's leading science fiction media magazine, amongst discerning readers asked to vote for the greatest book of the 20th century. Please note also that his name is spelt Tolkien (there is no "Tolkein").
Isabel Allende is one of Latin America's foremost female writers. Through translation, her work has received acclaim in the United States as well. Allende was born in Lima, Peru in 1942, but moved to Chile at the age of three. Two years after her uncle, Chilean President Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973, she fled with her husband and children to Venezuela. She published her first novel, La casa de los espiritus (The House of the Spirits) in 1982, followed by De amor y de sombra (Of Love and Shadows) in 1984, Eva Luna in 1989, El plan infinitivo (The Infinite Plan) in 1991, as well as a collection of short stories, Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna) in 1990. Allende writes in Spanish, combining sometimes harsh, realistic, and political fiction with the surreal in the tradition of magical realism.
Allende is considered to be part of the Latin American feminist literary awakening. History and culture have influenced the way in which she writes about her experiences. Historically, female subordination is evident in every Latin American social institution, in large part due to the conception of the Virgin Mary--nurturing, passive, and sexually pure--as the ideal woman. The political realm, therefore, is in role conflict with this image. In fact, there is the perception that women are passive to political issues, and vote merely out of civil duty. In her writing, Allende deals with politics, history, and social institutions in a way that is all but passive.
Even John Irving's mother has come to expect the lurid elements of her son's work. "Christ! Another dildo?" she exclaimed when presented with an excerpt from the writer's novel-in-progress, A Widow for One Year. "I tried to explain to her that there were differences among dildos, and that a dildo from a previous novel and a current novel are not the same," Irving said on the West Coast leg of a recent tour introducing his book (as yet without a publisher) and the upcoming film productions of The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus.
Irving eschews Ernest Hemingway's approach: Write what you know. This conviction has left him free to explore life beyond the pale: In The World According to Garp, a group of women cut out their tongues in empathy for a rape victim; in The Hotel New Hampshire, a brother and sister enjoy an incestuous relationship; and the pint-sized Christ figure in A Prayer for Owen Meany saws off his best friend's trigger finger to make him ineligible to fight in Vietnam.
The 55-year-old New England native is opinionated and passionate about his métiers -- writing and wrestling -- and he uses each to explore the world of rules, manners, and civility, and the consequences of breaking social codes.
John le Carré is the nom de plume of David John Moore Cornwell, who was born in 1931 in Poole, Dorset, and was educated at Sherborne School, at the University of Berne (where he studied German literature for a year) and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in modern languages.
He taught at Eton from 1956 to 1958 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964, serving first as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn and subsequently as Political Consul in Hamburg. He started writing novels in 1961, and since then has published eighteen titles.
His books have won prizes including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Malaparte Prize in Italy and the Nikos Kasanzakis Prize. Six of his books have been filmed, three made into television series and three more - THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, THE NIGHT MANAGER and OUR GAME - are about to go into film production. David Cornwell is an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and has Honorary Doctorates at Exeter University, Bath University, The University of Southampton and The University of St. Andrews.
He lives in Cornwall.
Born July 24th, 1964 in Tokyo.
Graduated from Nihon University, Division of arts, majored in literature.
With her first work, Kitchen she won the 6th Kaien Newcomer Writers Prize in November, 1987 and then the 16th Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize in January, 1988.
She was also awarded the 39th edition, Best Newcomer Artists Recommended by the Minister of Education in August, 1988 with Kitchen and Utakata/Sankuchuari.
In March 1989 TSUGUMI was awarded the 2nd Yamamoto Shugoro Literary Prize.
In November,1995 Amurita won the 5th Murasaki-shikibu Prize named after the autoress of the Story of Genji. Not only in Japan, she was awarded a couple prizes in Italy; Literary Prize Scanno in June, 1993 and Fendissime Literary Prize in March,1996 and Literary Prize Maschera d' argento in November, 1999.
In October, 2000 Furin to nanbei awarded the 10th edition Bunkamura Duet Magot Literary Prize.
Her works including Kitchen are translated and published in more than 20 countries.
Peter Høeg is a respected Danish author and well-known throughout the world. His acclaimed novels have been translated into many languages. His works include Smilla's Sense of Snow(which earned him the 1992 Glass Key Award from the Crime Writers of Scandinavia), Borderliners, The Woman and the Ape, and The History of Danish Dreams. In his early years he was a sailor, actor, athlete, ballet dancer, and in 1996 he initiated a foundation for the support of women and children in third world countries.
