“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the ne... Read More
Of all the English-language modernists, Samuel Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He opened up the possibility of theatre and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of time and place in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famou... Read More
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist and playwright, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". Also, he was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. During the 15 years following the WWII, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot, Fin... Read More
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, known as Marcel Proust, was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past. In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood during the late 19th century to early 20th century aristocratic France,... Read More
Marcel Proust was born in the Paris Borough of Auteuil on 10 July 1871, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. He was born during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of In Search of Lost Time concerns the vast changes, most particular... Read More
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time. Sodome et Gomorrhe, sometimes translated as Cities of the Plain, was originally published in two volumes. It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, R... Read More
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, known as Marcel Proust, was a French novelist, critic, and essayist. Born in 1871 in the Parisian suburb of Auteuil, Marcel Proust led an active social life in his youth, penetrating the highest circles of wealth and aristocracy. He suffered from severe asthma, which worsened as he grew older, and his illness prompted him to withdraw from society and... Read More
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, known as Marcel Proust, was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time. In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood during the late 19th century to early 20th century aristocratic France, while reflecting on the loss of time and lack of... Read More
East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s passionate and exhilarating epic, re-creates the seminal stories of Genesis through the intertwined lives of two American families. Spanning the period between the American Civil War and the end of World War I, the novel highlights the conflicts of two generations of brothers, the first being the kind, gentle Adam Trask and his wild brother Charles. Adam eventuall... Read More
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. In the early 20th-century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and prot... Read More
British philosopher, mathematician, historian, writer, and political activist Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy. He received his Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Russel... Read More
In 1899 Jack London broke into print in the Overland Monthly with his Alaskan stories. They brought him immediate success and are among the finest he ever wrote. London's first novel, A Daughter of the Snows, was a commercial and critical failure, but The Call of the Wild brought him national fame at the age of twenty-six. The Sea Wolf was first published in 1904. This extraordinary tale of hig... Read More
British writer and journalist Graham Bruce Hancock describes himself as an "unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity's past". Prior to 1990, his works dealt mainly with problems of economic and social development. Since 1990 his works have focused mainly on speculative connections he makes between various archaeological, historical, and cross-cultural phenomena.... Read More
John Champlin Gardner Jr. was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life... Read More
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian school teacher and author of books that examined the history of philosophy and religion for an audience of young readers. Gaarder studied the history of ideas, religion, and Nordic literature at the University of Oslo. After graduating in 1976, he worked as a secondary-school teacher of philosophy, religion, and literature in Oslo and Bergen. He began his literary... Read More
Milan Kundera is a Czech-born French writer. Originally, he wrote in Czech. From 1993 onwards, he has written his novels in French. Between 1985 and 1987 he undertook the revision of the French translations of his earlier works. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in bookstores." In his teens, he joined the Commu... Read More
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the former Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. Dawkins is known as an outspoken atheist. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intell... Read More
Richard Dawkins, in full Clinton Richard Dawkins, is a British evolutionary biologist, ethologist, and popular-science writer who emphasized the gene as the driving force of evolution and generated significant controversy with his enthusiastic advocacy of atheism. In 1976 he published his first book, The Selfish Gene, in which he tried to rectify what he maintained was a widespread misunderstan... Read More
Richard Dawkins is a British scientist whose books on genetics and evolution have found a wide general readership. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Dawkins studied at Oxford, then taught at the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to Oxford as a fellow of New College. Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, his first book, to make clear that adaptations in species do not occur for the go... Read More