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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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

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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