The highest paid author during the 1930s William Somerset Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle after both of his parents died before he was ten. For five years he studied medicine at the medical school of St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth. The initial run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he ser... Read More
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. In 1907, at the age of 41, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. The size and speed of his success was an event in itself. He enjoyed profound popularity with the English-speaking public through th... Read More
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British writer whose allegorical novels examine historical and philosophical issues by means of surreal characters, brooding humour, and an effusive and melodramatic prose style. His treatment of sensitive religious and political subjects made him a controversial figure. In 1983 Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK's senior lit... Read More
Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist best known for the novels Midnight's Children. He studied in India and England, reading History at King's College, Cambridge. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migra... Read More