Thursday, May 22, 2008

Anita Desai (1937 )


Anita Desai was born June 24, 1937 in India to a German mother and an Indian father. Although she now resides in South Hadley, Massachusetts, teaching writing at Mount Holyoke College, she is a member of the Advisory Board for English in New Delhi. Desai writes in English, saying, "I first learned English when I went to school. It was the first language that I learned to read and write, so it became my literary language. Languages tend to proliferate around one in India, and one tends to pick up and use whatever is at hand. It makes one realize each language has its own distinct genius." Her family spoke German at home and Hindi to their friends.

Desai's work is part of a new style of writing to come out of India which is not nearly as conservative as Indian writing has been in the past. One concern that is part of her work, especially the novel Baumgartner's Bombay, is that about foreignness and dividedness. Desai grew up during World War II and could see the anxiety her German mother was experiencing about the situation and her family in Germany. After the war when she realized the Germany she had known was devasted, her mother never returned there, nor had any desire to return. Anita herself did not visit until she was an adult.

Selected works:

* The Peacock, 1963
* Voices in the City, 1965
* Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
* The Peacock Garden, 1974
* Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
* Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
* Fire on the Mountain, 1977
* Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
* Clear Light of Day, 1980
* Village by the Sea, 1982
* In Custody, 1984 - film 1993, dir. by Ismail Merchant, starring Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, screenplay by Anita Desai
* Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
* Journey to Ithaca, 1996
* Fasting, Feasting, 1999
* Diamond Dust, 2000
* The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004

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R. K. Narayan (1906 -2001)


R. K. Narayan was born in Madras in 1906 and educated there and at Maharajah's College in Mysore. He has lived in India ever since, apart from his travels. Most of his work, starting from his first novel Swami and friends (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which at the same time captures everything Indian while having a unique identity of its own. After having read only a few of his books it is difficult to shake off the feeling that you have vicariously lived in this town. Malgudi is perhaps the single most endearing "character" R. K. Narayan has ever created.

He has published numerous novels, five collections of short stories (A Horse and Two Goats, An Astrologer's Day, Lawley Road, Malgudi Days, and The Grandmother's Tale), two travel books (My Dateless Diary and The Emerald Route), four collections of essays (Next Sunday, Reluctant Guru, A Writer's Nightmare, and A Story-Teller's World), a memoir (My Days), and some translations of Indian epics and myths (The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, and Gods, Demons and Others).

In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha (the non-elective House of Parliament in India). He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide (1958).

R. K. Narayan's full name is Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami. In his early years he signed his name as R. K. Narayanaswami, but apparently at the time of the publication of Swami and Friends, he shortened it to R. K. Narayan on Graham Greene's suggestion."(from R. K. Narayan:
a Profile)

Novels

* Swami and Friends (1935)
* The Bachelor of Arts (1937)
* The Dark Room (1938)
* The English Teacher (1945)
* Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi (1949)
* The Financial Expert (1952)
* Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
* The Guide (1958)
* The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961)
* The Vendor of Sweets (1967)
* The Painter of Signs (1976)
* A Tiger for Malgudi (1983)
* Talkative Man (1986)
* The World of Nagaraj (1990)
* A Grandmother's Tale (1994)

Collections

* The World of Malgudi (2000)
* Salt and Sawdust: Stories and Table-Talk

Short Story Collections

An asterisk indicates a collection published only in India.

* Dodu and Other Stories (1943)*
* Cyclone and Other Stories (1945)*
* An Astrologer's Day and Other Short Stories (1947)
* Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956)*
* A Horse and Two Goats (1970)
* Malgudi Days (1982)
* Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985)
* The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1993)
* The Watchman
* Fruition at Forty

Non-Fiction

* Next Sunday (1960)
* My Dateless Diary (1964)
* My Days (1974)
* The Emerald Route (1980)
* A Writer's Nightmare (1988)
* Like The Sun

Mythology

* Gods, Demons and Others (1965)
* The Ramayana (1972)
* The Mahabharata (1972)


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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Agatha Christie ( 1890 - 1976 )


* Born : 15 September 1890

* Birthplace : Torquay, Devon, England

* Died : 12 January 1976 (Natural causes)

* Best Known As : Author of Murder on the Orient Express


Name at birth: Agatha May Clarissa Miller


From the 1920s until the 1970s Agatha Christie was the world's most popular mystery author, reportedly selling more than one billion books worldwide. While other mystery authors like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett came and went, Christie continued to turn out gentle stories of murder and detection in polite society, sometimes publishing two or three books in a year. Her two most popular detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, were featured in 30 and 12 novels, respectively. Dozens of Christie's stories became movies, most notably the star-studded 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express. In 1971 Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire for her contributions to British literature and culture.
Christie's play The Mousetrap has been running continuously in London's theater district since its premiere on November 25, 1952. It is now regarded as history's longest-running play

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


* Born: 16 October 1854

* Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland

* Died: 30 November 1900

* Best Known As: The author of The Importance of Being Earnest

Name at birth: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde


Oscar Wilde was an 19th century Irish writer whose works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is also one of the Victorian era's most famous dandies, a wit whose good-humored disdain for convention became less favored after he was jailed for homosexuality. Wilde grew up in a prosperous family and distinguished himself at Dublin's Trinity College and London's Oxford. He published his first volume of poems in 1881 and found work in England as a critic and lecturer, but it was his socializing (and self-promotion) that made him famous, even before the 1890 publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1895, at the height of his popularity, his relationship with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas was declared inappropriately intimate by Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde sued for libel, but the tables were turned when it became clear there was enough evidence to charge Wilde with "gross indecency" for his homosexual relationships. He was convicted and spent two years in jail, after which he went into self-imposed exile in France, bankrupt and in ill health. His other works include the comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895), several collections of children's stories and the French drama Salomé (1896).


The phrase "the Love that dare not speak its name" comes from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas, and when questioned about its meaning in open court, Wilde gave an impassioned speech on the value of male love... Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry (John Sholto Douglas), was a boxing enthusiast who endorsed the prizefighting rules that bear his name... One of Wilde's most famous quotes: "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."



Charles Dickens (1812-1870)


* Born: 7 February 1812

* Birthplace: Portsmouth, England

* Died: 9 June 1870

* Best Known As: The author of A Christmas Carol


Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and other popular novels of 19th-century England. Dickens' own childhood poverty influenced much of his writing, and he is known especially for characters pulled from the sooty streets of London: orphans and urchins, rogues, shopkeepers, stuffed shirts, widows, and other colorful characters. An all-around workhorse, Dickens edited a monthly magazine, wrote novels, gave public readings and came out with a Christmas story every year. His novels were typically published first in serial form -- as chapter-by-chapter monthly installments in magazines of the day. Among his major works are Oliver Twist (completed 1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), David Copperfield (1850), the historical drama A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). His 1843 tale A Christmas Carol featured the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and the sickly tot Tiny Tim, and has remained a popular holiday classic into the 21st century.
Dickens used the pen name Boz early in his career, and his first publication was the short story collection Sketches By Boz (1836)... Oliver Twist was the basis for the stage musical Oliver!; the show won the Tony Award for best musical in 1963, and a 1968 movie version (with Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger) won the Academy Award for best picture... Dickens married the former Catherine Hogarth in 1836. They had 10 children, but their marriage was often tense, and they separated in 1858... He was buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, near Geoffrey Chaucer and other fellow writers.


Anton Chekhov ( 1860 - 1904 )


* Born : 29 January 1860

* Birthplace : Taganrog, Russia

* Died : 2 July 1904 (tuberculosis)

* Best Known As : Author of The Cherry Orchard


Anton Chekhov wrote both plays and short stories. He is generally listed in the first rank of Russian playwrights and in the high second rank (a notch below Pushkin and Tolstoy) as a writer of prose. His most famous plays include The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Chekhov had a famous love affair with the actress Olga Knipper; they married in 1901.
Chekhov's birthdate was January 29 according to the Gregorian calendar, which wasn't adopted in Russia until the 20th century. By the old-style Julian calendar, his birthdate was January 17.


Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 1792 -1822 )



* Born : 4 August 1792

* Birthplace : Near Sussex, England

* Died : 8 July 1822 (drowning)

* Best Known As : 19th century romantic poet


A radical young fellow, Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 when he published The Necessity of Atheism. His early poems advocated social reform, reflecting the influence of the philosophical writings of William Godwin. He fell in love with Godwin's daughter Mary, who later gained fame as the author of Frankenstein. After Shelley's first wife committed suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin were married. Shelley was lost at sea in 1822, while sailing off the coast of Italy.


P. G. Wodehouse(1881-1975)


Prolific English comic novelist, short story writer, lyricist and playwright, best known as the creator of Jeeves, the perfect "gentleman's gentleman," Bertie Wooster of the Drones Club, a young bachelor aristocrat, and the absentminded Lord Emsworth of the Blandings Castle. Most of Wodehouse's works gently parodied the British aristocracy of the 1920s and 1930s. After World War II Wodehouse lived in the United States. During the decades, Wodehouse's picture of Edwardian England gradually disengaged from reality, and became an imaginary land which was untouched by time. As a prose stylist Wodehouse praised by such writers as Hilaire Bellock and Evelyn Waugh. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, as the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse, a British judge in Hong Kong, and Eleanor (Deane) Wodehouse. Within the family, Wodehouse's first name was abbreviated to "Plum" and later also his wife and friends used this name. Until the age of four, Wodehouse lived in Hong Kong with his parents. Returning to England, he spent much of his childhood in the care of various aunts, seeing rarely his parents. Wodehouse attended boarding schools and received his secondary education at Dulwich College, London, which he always remembered with affection. "To me, the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven," he once said. His first story Wodehouse wrote at the age of seven. His first article for which he was paid was 'Some Aspects of Game Captaincy". Wodehouse wrote it for a competition sponsored by The Public School Magazine. However, Wodehouse's father did not approve of his son's writing, and after graduating in 1900 Wodehouse worked two years at the London branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Wodehouse entered the literary world first as a free-lance writer, contributing humorous stories to Punch and the London Globe, where he had a column called 'By the Way'. Most of his stories appeared first serialized at the Saturday Evening Post. After 1909 he lived and worked long periods in the United States and in France. In 1914 he married Ethel Newton, a widow; they had met in New York eight weeks earlier. She had a daughter, Leonora, whom Wodehouse adopted legally. In 1926 he dedicated THE HEART OF A GOOF to his daughter "without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half time." Leonora died in 1943. Wodehouse wrote for musical comedy in New York and for Hollywood, but viewed the film industry ironically. "In every studio in Hollywood there are rows and rows of hutches, each containing an author on a long contract at a weekly salary. You see their anxious little faces peering out through the bars. You hear them whining piteously to be taken for a walk. And does the heart bleed? You bet it bleeds. A visitor has to be very callous not to be touched by such a spectacle as this." (Wodehouse in Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 1929) Once he spent a week at William Randolph Hearst's estate and wrote: "I sat on [Hearst's mistress Marion Davies's] right the first night, the found myself being edged further and further away till I got to the extreme end . . . Another day, and I should have been feeding on the floor." Wodehouse's early stories were mainly for schoolboys centering on a character known as Ronald (or sometimes Rupert) Eustace Psmith, a "very tall, very thin, very solemn young man". Following the World War I Wodehouse gained fame with the novel PICCADILLY JIM (1918). At the time he married Ethel, he had only $100 in bank, but by the 1920s he was earning $100,000 in a year. His major breakthrough Wodehause made with the THE INIMITABLE JEEVES (1924). He had introduced Bertie Woorster and a valet named Jeeves in the short story 'The Man with Two Left Feet' (1917). THANK YOU, JEEVES (1934), his novel centering on these characters, was immediately greeted as one of his very best. Although the juxtaposition of a clever servant and foolish master had been known since classical times and was famously used by Cervantes in the Don Quixote-Sancho Panza pair, Wodehouse managed to refresh the old idea and add to it a peculiar British twist. Usually Jeeves saved Bertie from many disasters. Of his relatives the most formidable was Aunt Agatha. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in his Jeeves, A Gentleman's Personal Gentleman (1979): "Bertie was under the impression that he had chosen Jeeves, approving the man who had been sent by an agency. But that is not what happened. Proust once remarked that, 'It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since, as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.'" In addition to his humorous novels and stories, Wodehouse collaborated with Guy Bolton in writing several popular Broadway musicals, notably SALLY (1920), SITTING PRETTY (1924), ANYTHING GOES (1934), and BRING ON THE GIRLS (1954). Wodehouse's greatest lyrics include 'Bill', a hit in the musical Show Boat. "Musical comedy was my dish," he once said. He collaborated among others with Jerome Kern (Oh, Boy!, 1917; Leave it to Jane, 1917), George Gershwin (Oh, Kay!, 1926), and Cole Porter, who wrote lyrics and music for Anything Goes. Wodehouse spent the remainder of his life in several homes in the U.S. and Europe. During World War II Wodehouse was captured by the Germans at Le Touquet, France, where he used to stay when not living in England-partly because tax authorities. At that time the U.S. had not entered the war. After spending about a year in various German camps, he was interned in Berlin, and naïvely recorded five interviews, depicting humorously his experiences as an internee. These interviews were broadcast by German radio to America and England, but his made Wodehouse liable to charges of treason. Wodehouse was labelled as a quisling in the Daily Mirror and libraries withdrew his books-the Battle of Britain was no laughing matter. After the liberation of Paris, Wodehouse was arrested by the French, and released in 1945 through the intervention of British officials. For fear of prosecution, which the British officials had actually dropped, he was not able to return to his home country. Wodehouse settled in the United States, living in his new home country in near-seclusion. He bought a ten-acre estate on Long Island in 1952. An American citizen he became three years later. By this time his political mistakes were forgotten, and Wodehouse was subsequently awarded a D.Litt. from Oxford University. He died in Remsenburg, Long Island, on February 14, 1975. Wodehouse had received a knighthood a few weeks before he died. Wodehouse wrote nearly 100 novels, about 30 plays and 20 screenplays. His first book, THE POTHUNTERS, a short story collection, was published 1902. The last, AUNT'S AREN'T GENTLEMEN, appeared 1974. Wodehouse also wrote his memoirs, PERFORMING FLEA (1951) and OVER SEVENTY (1957). In the 1960s Wodehouse's stories inspired the television series The World of Wooster and Blandings Castle. Wodehouse Playhouse started in 1975 and in the 1990s Hugh Laurie as Bertie and Stephen Fry as Jeeves appeared in new television series. Piccadilly Jim was made into a film by Robert Z. Leonard in 1936, starring Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans, and Frank Morgan.

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