The Library of World

Literature
 Chinua Achebe
“Things Fall Apart”
Nigeria

• Poet and novelist Chinua Achebe was one of the most important African
writers of the last century. He was also considered by many to be one of the
most original literary artists writing in English during his lifetime. He is
bestknown for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958).
• Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on April 2,
1805. Andersen achieved worldwide fame for writing innovative and
influential fairy tales. Many of his stories, including "The Ugly Duckling"
and "The Princess and the Pea," remain classics of the genre.

Hans Christian Andersen

“Fairy Tales”
Denmark
• Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for
her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and
Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' and 'Emma.‘

• Honoré de Balzac, original name Honoré Balssa, (born

May 20, 1799, Tours, France—died August 18, 1850, Paris),
French literary artist who produced a vast
numberof novels and short stories collectively called La
Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy).
• Samuel Beckett was born on April 13, 1906, in
Dublin, Ireland. During the 1930s and 1940s he
wrote his first novels and short stories. He wrote a
trilogy of novels in the 1950s as well as famous
plays like Waiting for Godot. In 1969 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

• The Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

is bestknown for the Decameron. For his Latin
works and his role in reviving Hellenistic learning
in Florence, he may be considered one of the
early humanists.
• Born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899, Jorge
Luis Borges was an Argentine journalist, author
and poet. His works, holding a prominent position
in world literature are considered to be among the
classics of 20th century.

• Emily Brontë is best known for authoring the

novel Wuthering Heights. She was the sister of
Charlotte and AnneBrontë, also famous authors.
pseudonym Ellis Bell
• Albert Camus became known for his political
journalism, novels and essays during the 1940s. His
best-known works, including The Stranger (1942)
and The Plague (1947), are
exemplars ofabsurdism. Camus won the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1957 and died on January 4,
1960, in Burgundy, France.

• Paul Celan. Paul Celan was famous for being both

a poet and translator, born in Romania, on
November 23, 1920. He was born “Paul Antschel”
into a Jewish family; however he eventually
changed his name to “Paul Celan”, one of his
pseudo names.
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pseudonym of Louis-
FerdinandDestouches, (born May 27, 1894,
Courbevoie, near Paris, France—died July 1, 1961,
Meudon), French writer and physician who, while
admired for his talent, is better known for his anti-
Semitism and misanthropy

• Miguel de Cervantes, in full Miguel de Cervantes

Saavedra, (born September 29?, 1547,
Alcalá de Henares, Spain—died April 22, 1616,
Madrid), Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet, the
creator of Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and the most
important and celebrated figure in Spanish literature
• Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 – 25 October
1400) was an English poet and author. Widely
considered the greatest English poet of the Middle
Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales

• Joseph Conrad. Famous for writing nautical

novels, Joseph Conrad, the Polish born English
novelist is considered to be an asset to English
literature. Although some of his works fall in the
romanticism category of literature, he is
widely known to be a modernist
• Dante, in full Dante Alighieri, (born c. May 21–June 20,
1265, Florence, Italy—died September 13/14, 1321,
Ravenna), Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist,
moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is
best known for the monumental epic poem La
commedia, later named La divina commedia (The
Divine Comedy).

• Charles Dickens was a British novelist, journalist, editor,

illustrator and social commentator who wrote such
beloved classic novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol,
Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two
Cities and Great Expectations.
• Denis Diderot (French: [dəni did(ə)ʁo]; 5 October
1713 – 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art
critic, and writer, best knownfor serving as co-
founder, chief editor, and contributor to the
Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.
He was a prominent figure during the
Enlightenment

• Bruno Alfred Döblin (10 August 1878 – 26 June 1957)

was aGerman novelist, essayist, and doctor, best
known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). ...
Like many other German émigrés he spent the war
years in Los Angeles, where he converted to
Catholicism.
• Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky is best known for his
novella Notes from the Underground and for four
long novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The
Possessed (also and more accurately known as The
Demons and The Devils), and The Brothers
Karamazov

• George Eliot. ... Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819

– 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or
Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was
an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and
one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
• Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1914 – April 16, 1994) was
an American novelist, literary critic, and scholar best
known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the
National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and
Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical
essays, and Going to the Territory (1986).

• Euripides was one of the great Athenian playwrights and

poets of ancient Greece, known for the many tragedies
he wrote, including Medea and The Bacchae.
• William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize–winning
novelist of the American South who wrote
challenging prose and created the fictional
Yoknapatawpha County. He is best known for such
novels as 'The Sound and the Fury' and 'As I Lay
Dying.‘

• Gustave Flaubert, (born December 12, 1821, Rouen,

France—died May 8, 1880, Croisset), novelist
regarded as the prime mover of the realist school of
French literature and best known for his
masterpiece, Madame Bovary (1857), a realistic
portrayal of bourgeois life, which led to a trial on
charges of the novel's alleged
• Federico García Lorca, (born June 5, 1898, Fuente
Vaqueros, Granada province, Spain—died August 18 or
19, 1936, between Víznar and Alfacar, Granada
province), Spanish poet and playwright who, in a career
that spanned just 19 years, resurrected and revitalized
the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre

• Gabriel García Márquez was one of the best-

known Latin American writers in history. He
won a Nobel Prize for Literature, mostly for his
masterpiece of magic realism, Cien años de soledad
(1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude).
• Gilgamesh was a historical king of the Sumerian city-
state of Uruk, amajor hero in ancient Mesopotamian
mythology, and the protagonist of the Epic
of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian
during the late second millennium BC. He probably
ruled sometime between 2800 and 2500 BC and was
posthumously deified.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (born August 28, 1749,

Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died March 22, 1832,
Weimar, Saxe-Weimar), German poet, playwright,
novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic,
and amateur artist, considered the greatest German
literary figure of the modern era.
• Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born
Russian writer. He contributed to Russian literature
through his magnificently crafted dramas, novels
and short stories. He was one of the major
proponents of the natural school of Russian literary
realism

• Günter Wilhelm Grass (German: [ˈɡʏntɐ ˈɡʁas]; 16

October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German
novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist,
sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in
Literature. ... Grass isbest known for his first novel,
The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic
realism.
• João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), one of the most
remarkable innovators of narrative and language in
Portuguese and arguably Brazil's greatest fiction writer.
... Although Guimarães Rosa proved adept at languages,
he went to medical school at what would eventually
be known as the Federal University of Minas Gerais

• Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun, pseudonym

of Knut Pedersen, (born August 4, 1859, Lom, Norway—
died February 19, 1952, near Grimstad), Norwegian
novelist, dramatist, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1920.
• Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway is seen as
one of the great American 20th century novelists, and
is known for works like 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'The
Old Man and the Sea.

• The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between

the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on
the coast of Asia Minor. He is famous for the epic
poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which have had an
enormous effect on Western culture, but very little
is known about their alleged author.
• Henrik Johan Ibsen (/ˈɪbsən/; Norwegian: [ˈhɛnrɪk ˈɪpsn̩];
20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian
playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of
modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the
father of realism" and one of the most influential
playwrights of his time.

• In the Hebrew Book of Job

• Not much is known about Job based on the Masoretic
text of the Jewish Bible. The characters in the Book of
Job consist of Job, his wife, his three friends (Bildad,
Eliphaz, and Zophar), a man named Elihu, God, and
angels (one of whom is named Satan).
• James Joyce, in full James Augustine Aloysius Joyce,
(born February 2, 1882, Dublin, Ireland—died January
13, 1941, Zürich, Switzerland), Irish novelist noted for
his experimental use oflanguage and
exploration of new literary methods in such large
works of fiction as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake
(1939)

• Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech-born German writer

is best known for his short story Metamorphosis (1912)
and the widespread familiarity of the literary term
Kafkaesque, inspired byhis nightmarishly complex and
bizarre yet absurd and impersonal short stories.
• Kālidāsa was a Classical Sanskrit writer, widely
regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the
Sanskrit language of India. His plays and poetry
are primarily based on the Vedas, the Ramayana,
the Mahabharata and the Puranas.

• Kawabata, Yasunari (1899–1972) Japanese

novelist. His best-known works are Snow Country
(1948), Thousand Cranes (1952) and The Sound of
the Mountain (1952). He was awarded the 1968
Nobel Prize for
literature. Kawabata, Yasunari(1899–1972)
Japanese novelist.
• The Greek author, journalist, and statesman Nikos
Kazantzakis (1883-1957) is considered the foremost
figure in modern Greek literature. His work is marked
by his search for God and immortality.

• Born in England in 1885, D.H. Lawrence is regarded as

one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
He published many novels and poetry volumes during
his lifetime, including Sons and Lovers and Women in
Love, but is best known for his infamous Lady
Chatterley's Lover.
• Icelandic writer, who won the Nobel Prize for literature
in 1955. Halldor K. Laxness published his first book at
the age of 17. He is best-known for his fiction depicting
the hardships of the working fishermen and farmers, and
historical novels combining the tradition of sagas and
mythology with national and social issues.

• Giacomo Leopardi. Giacomo Leopardi, (born June 29,

1798, Recanati, Papal States—died June 14, 1837,
Naples), Italian poet, scholar, and philosopher whose
outstanding scholarly and philosophical works and
superb lyric poetry place him among the great writers of
the 19th century.
• Doris Lessing (born 1919) was a South African
expatriate writerknown for her strong sense of
feminism. A short story writer and novelist,
as well as essayist and critic, Lessing was deeply
concerned with the cultural inequities of her native
land.

• Astrid Lindgren. Astrid Lindgren, (born

November 14, 1907, Vimmerby, Sweden—died
January 28, 2002, Stockholm), influential Swedish
writer of children's books who created such
memorable characters as Pippi Longstocking.
• Lu Xun is typically regarded by Mao Zedong as the
most influential Chinese writer who was associated
with the May Fourth Movement. He produced harsh
criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his
analysis of the "Chinese national character". He was
sometimes called a "champion of common
humanity.“

• The original name of the Mahabharata is thought to

be Jaya, or a victory song. Then it started
being called Vijaya, with reference to the victory over
the Kauravas. Eventually it came to ne called Bharata,
the story of Bharat. Finally it started beingcalled
Mahabharata, the great story of Bharat.
• Naguib Mahfouz, also spelled Najīb Maḥfūẓ,
(born December 11, 1911, Cairo, Egypt—died
August 30, 2006, Cairo), Egyptian novelist and
screenplay writer, who was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1988, the first Arabic writer
to be so honoured.

• Thomas Mann, (born June 6, 1875, Lübeck,

Germany—died August 12, 1955, near Zürich,
Switzerland), German novelist and essayist
whose early novels—Buddenbrooks (1900), Der
Tod in Venedig (1912; Death in Venice), and Der
Zauberberg (1924; The Magic Mountain)—
earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1929.
• Herman Melville. Herman Melville, (born August
1, 1819, New York City—died September 28, 1891,
New York City), American novelist, short-story
writer, and poet, best knownfor his novels of the
sea, including his masterpiece, Moby Dick (1851).

• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of

Montaigne (/mɒnˈteɪn/ mon-TAYN, French: [miʃɛl
ekɛm də mɔ̃tɛɲ]; 28 February 1533 – 13 September
1592) was one of the most significant
philosophers ofthe French Renaissance, known for
popularizing the essay as aliterary genre.
• Elsa Morante, (born Aug. 18, 1912, Rome, Italy—
died Nov. 25, 1985, Rome), Italian novelist, short-
story writer, and poet known for the epic and
mythical quality of her works, which usually
centre upon the struggles of the young in coming
to terms with the world of adulthood.

• Who Was Toni Morrison? Born on February 18,

1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel
Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor
and professor. Her novels areknown for their epic
themes, exquisite language and richly detailed
African American characters who are central to
their narratives.
• Murasaki Shikibu (紫 式部, English: Lady Murasaki;
c. 973 or 978 – c. 1014 or 1031) was a Japanese
novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial
court during the Heian period. She is best known as
the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese
between about 1000 and 1012.

• Robert Musil, also called Robert, Edler (Nobleman)

Von Musil, (born Nov. 6, 1880, Klagenfurt, Austria—
died April 15, 1942, Geneva, Switz.), Austrian-German
novelist,best known for his monumental unfinished
novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–43; The
Man Without Qualities).
• Russian-born American poet, fiction writer, and
butterfly expert Vladimir Nabokov,most famous for
the novel Lolita, noted for his dramatic descriptions,
experimental style, and carefully structured plots,
was one of the most highly acclaimed novelistsof his
time.

• Njáls saga, also called Njála, or Burnt Njáll, one of

the longest and generally considered the finest of
the 13th-century Icelanders' sagas. It presents the
most comprehensive picture of Icelandic life in the
heroic age and has a wide range of complex
characters.
• George Orwell (June 25, 1903 to January 21, 1950),
born Eric Arthur Blair, was a novelist, essayist and
critic best known for his novels Animal Farm and
Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was aman of strong opinions
who addressed some of the major political
movements of his times, including imperialism,
fascism and communism.

• The first major Roman poet to begin his career during

the reign of Augustus, Ovid is today best known for
the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous
mythological narrative written in the meter of epic,
and for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria
("The Art of Love") and Fasti.
• Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (Portuguese:
[fɨɾˈnɐ̃du pɨˈsoɐ]; 13 June 1888 – 30 November
1935), commonly known asFernando Pessoa, was
a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator,
publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most
significant literary figures of the 20th century

• Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; born Edgar Poe; January 19,

1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor,
and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and
short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the
macabre.
• Marcel Proust. Marcel Proust, (born July 10, 1871,
Auteuil, near Paris, France—died November 18, 1922,
Paris), French novelist, author of À la recherche du
temps perdu (1913–27; In Search of Lost Time), a seven-
volume novel based on Proust's life told psychologically
and allegorically

• François Rabelais, pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier, (born

c. 1494, Poitou, France—died probably April 9, 1553,
Paris), French writer and priest who for his
contemporaries was an eminent physician and humanist
and for posterity is the author of the comic masterpiece
Gargantua and Pantagruel.
• Mr. Juan Rulfo was best known for his 1955 novel ''Pedro
Paramo,'' the story of a Mexican village in which all the
characters, including the narrator, were dead. Earlier, in
1953, ''El Llano en Llamas,'' a collection of 17 Rulfo short
stories about Mexican village life, was published.

• The Persian poet and Sufi mystic Jalai ed-Din

Rumi (1207-1273) was a brilliant lyrical poet who founded
his own religious order, the Mevlevis. His poetry showed
original religious and wonderfully esoteric forms of
expression.
• Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist best
known for the novels Midnight's Children (1981) and The
Satanic Verses (1988), for which he was accused of
blasphemy against Islam

• He is Sheikh Musharrif ud-din sadi also

known for a number of works in Arabic. In the Bustan,
Saadi writes of a man who relates his time in battle with
the Mongols: In Isfahan I had a friend who was warlike,
spirited, and shrewd....after long I met him: "O tiger-
seizer!“
• Tayeb Salih, one of the best known Arabic novelists of
the 20th century, died on Wednesday in London, aged
80. The Sudanese author, who had long been pushed
as acandidate for the Nobel prize by Sudanese literary
groups, was known for his depictions of east-west
culture collisions

• José Saramago, (born November 16, 1922, Azinhaga,

Portugal—died June 18, 2010, Lanzarote, Canary
Islands, Spain), Portuguese novelist and man of letters
who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.
• William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)
was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely
regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is
often called England's national poet and the
"Bard of Avon“

• Sophocles (/ˈsɒfəkliːz/; Greek: Σοφοκλῆς Sophoklēs,

pronounced [so.pʰo.klɛ̂ːs]; c. 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC) is
one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have
survived. His first plays were written later than or
contemporary with those of Aeschylus, and earlier than
or contemporary with those of Euripides.
• This biography profiles his childhood, career, life,
achievements and timeline. Marie-Henri Beyle, better
known as Stendhal, was a famous French writer of the
19th century. He became known for his critical analysis
of characters' consciousness. He is also considered one
of the forerunners of 'realism'.

• Laurence Sterne. Born in Ireland in 1713, Laurence

Sterne was a clergyman and novelist; he is best
known for his inventive and humorous work The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
• Italo Svevo. ... A close friend of Irish novelist and poet
James Joyce, Svevo was considered a pioneer of the
psychological novel in Italy and is best known for his
classic Modernist novel La coscienza di Zeno
(1923), a work that had a profound effect on the
movement.

• Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and satirist. Best

knownfor writing Gulliver's Travels, he was dean of St.
Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
• Leo Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works,
War and Peace (1865–69) and Anna Karenina (1875–77),
which are commonly regarded as among the finest
novels ever written. War and Peace in particular seems
virtually to define this form for many readers and critics

• Russian writer Anton Chekhov is recognized as a master

of the modern short story and a leading playwright of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries
• The Thousand and One Nights. The Thousand and
One Nights,also called The Arabian Nights, Arabic Alf
laylah wa laylah, collection of largely Middle Eastern
and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship
whose tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor
have almost become part of Western folklore.

• Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also known as Mark

Twain, was amajor American writer from Missouri. His
stories and novels are famous for their humor, vivid
details, and memorable characters. His best-
known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both classics in
American literature.
• Valmiki was the composer of the first Sanskrit poem
(the Adikavya) known the world over as the epic
Ramayana (Story of Lord Rama), hence he is called the
Adikavi or First Poet - the Poet of Poets of India. He was
born along the banks of the Ganges in ancient India
to a sage by the name of Prachetasa.

• Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius

Maro, (born October 15, 70 bce, Andes, near Mantua
[Italy]—died September 21, 19 bce, Brundisium), Roman
poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from
c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death).
• Called the "Bard of Democracy" and considered one
of America's most influential poets, Walt
Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills,
Long Island, New York

• While she is best known for her novels, especially

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse
(1927), Virginia Woolf alsowrote pioneering essays
on artistic theory, literary history, women's writing,
and the politics of power.
• Marguerite Yourcenar, original name Marguerite de Crayencour, (born June
8, 1903, Brussels, Belgium—died December 17, 1987, Northeast Harbor,
Mount Desert Island, Maine, U.S.), novelist, essayist, and short-story writer
who became the first woman to be elected to the Académie Française
(French Academy),