Elementary Writing

Colombian-born author and journalist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and a pioneer of the Latin American “Boom.” Affectionately known as “Gabo” to millions of readers, he first won international fame with his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a defining classic of twentieth century literature. Love in the Time of Cholera is his second greatest novel by which the film adaptation was released in 2007.

Algeria-born French author, philosopher, and journalist was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he became the first Africa-born writer to receive the award, in 1957. Novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes.

Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters; among the best known are her novels The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Toni Morrison on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Japanese writer and translator from Kobe. He studied Greek drama before managing a jazz bar in Tokyo from 1974 to 1981. His third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, earned the Noma Literary Award for New Writers and ended his career at the jazz bar. His next novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, won the prestigious Tanizaki Prize. In 1996, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He is also known as a skillful translator of Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, John Irving, Paul Theroux, and other American contemporary authors.

British Indian novelist and essayist who was condemned to death by leading Iranian Muslim clerics in 1989 for allegedly having blasphemed Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses. He first achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor for “services to literature” in June 2007, he also holds the highest rank — Commandeur — in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. His latest novel is The Enchantress of Florence, published in June 2008. In July 2008 Midnight’s Children won a public vote to be named the Best of the Booker, the best novel to win the Booker Prize in the award’s 40-year history.

Proclaimed as America’s greatest living novelist and literature’s reigning heavyweight champion (Time Magazine), Philip Roth gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960’s National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy’s Complaint. He has continued to write critically acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997).

Ranked #9 in the 2008 Forbes The Celebrity 100 list, Joanne “Jo” Rowling (pen name J. K. Rowling) is a British author, best known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. She has also written two small volumes which appear as the titles of Harry’s school books within the novels – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, which were published in 2001 in aid of Comic Relief. Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fandom.

One of the world’s most famous recluses (He has not published an original work since 1965 and has not been interviewed since 1980), an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Ryede, the 20th-century classic of disaffected youth. He followed Catcher with a short story collection: Nine Stories (1953), a collection of two novellas : Franny and Zooey (1961), and another collection of novellas: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled “Hapworth 16, 1924,” appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965. One of Salinger’s lines, explaining his desire for privacy, is “It’s all in the book”.

American novelist and short-story writer, whose enormously popular books revived the interest in horror fiction from the 1970s. King’s place in the modern horror fiction can be compared to that of J.R.R. Tolkien’s who created the modern genre of fantasy.

His first published novel, Carrie (filmed 1976), about a tormented teenage girl gifted with telekinetic powers, appeared in 1974 and was an immediate popular success. Carrie was the first of many novels in which King blended horror, the macabre, fantasy, and science fiction. Among such works were Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977; filmed 1980), The Stand (1978), The Dead Zone (1979; filmed 1983), Firestarter (1980; filmed 1984), Cujo (1981), Christine (1983; filmed 1983), It (1986), Misery (1987; filmed 1990), The Tommyknockers (1987), and The Dark Half (1989).

King also wrote the short stories collected in Night Shift (1978), as well as several novellas and motion-picture screenplays. Some of his novels were successfully adapted for the screen by such directors as Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, and Rob Reiner.

King’s books had sold more than 350 million copies worldwide, and his name had become synonymous with the genre of horror fiction.

British journalist and author, who wrote two of the most famous novels of the 20th century ‘Animal Farm‘ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)‘.

He published his first book, ‘Down and Out in Paris and London‘, in 1933 – he took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was followed by his first novel ‘Burmese Days‘ in 1934.

In 1936 he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in ‘The Road To Wigan Pier‘ (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco’s Nationalists.

Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By now he was a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books.

In 1945, Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm‘ was published. A political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell’s name and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)‘ was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases – such as ‘Big Brother is watching you’, ‘newspeak’ and ‘doublethink’ – entering popular use. However, Orwell’s health was deteriorating and he died of tuberculosis on 21 January 1950.