Halldór Laxness

Halldór Laxness was the pen name of Halldór Gudjónsson, an Icelandic writer who was born in Reykavík in 1902. After growing up on the family farm, he travelled to Europe and there converted to Catholicism and joined a monastery. He became dissatisfied with this and, while in the USA during the Depression, turned to Communism, also returning to Iceland. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1955 and his novels include Salka Valka, Independent People, Iceland’s Bell and The Atom Station. Laxness died in 1998.

Alexander Baron

Born in London in 1917, Alexander Baron joined the Communist Party only to leave it at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He served in the army during the Second World War and wrote three novels inspired by his wartime experiences, From the City, from the Plough (1948), There’s No Home (1950) and The Human Kind (1953). He wrote fourteen further novels, and also wrote screenplays and television scripts. Baron died in 1999.

Lucius Annæus Seneca

Lucius Annæus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) was born in Corduba (Córdoba) around 4BCE. He had a successful career in Rome, becoming a quaestor (i.e. overseer of public finances). Success was a risky business in ancient Rome — Seneca was condemned to death under Caligula and again under Claudius, but survived and was exiled to Corsica, where he wrote essays, poems and tragedies.

After eight years of exile, Seneca was recalled to Rome and given the task of tutoring the son of Claudius’s new wife Agrippina. This boy was to become the emperor Nero. When Nero succeeded the murdered Claudius, Seneca became one of the most powerful and wealthy figures in Rome, a power behind the throne, once more arousing envy on the part of others, which grew to the point that Seneca retired from public life, with Nero’s consent. He spent the next few years studying philosophy and writing, including the Epistulæ Morales ad Lucilium (a selection of which was published under the title Letters from a Stoic). In 65CE a conspiracy against Nero was uncovered, in which Seneca was implicated, and he was ordered to commit suicide.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. He went to school in Kenya and went to Makerere University College (then a campus of London University) in Uganda and Leeds University in Britain. Ngugi burst on to the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, as part of the celebration of Uganda’s Independence. In a productive literary period, Ngugi wrote eight short stories, two one-act plays, two novels, and a regular column for the Sunday Nation under the title, As I See It. One of the novels, Weep Not Child, was published to critical acclaim in 1964; followed by the second novel, The River Between (1965). His third was A Grain of Wheat (1967).

John Masters

John Masters was born in Calcutta in 1914 and was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst. He returned to India in 1934 as an army officer. During the Second World War he served in the Middle East and Burma. After the war he was a staff officer in GHQ India in Delhi, and then served as an instructor at the British Army Staff College in Camberley. After this he left the army and moved to the United States, where he became a successful writer. He lived in New Mexico, where he died in 1983.

His many novels include Nightrunners of Bengal (1951), The Deceivers (1952), The Lotus and the Wind (1953), Bhowani Junction (1954), Coromandel! (1955), Bugles and a Tiger (1956), Far, Far the Mountain Peak (1957), To the Coral Strand (1962) and The Ravi Lancers (1972).

Markus Zusak

Australian author Markus Zusak was born in 1975 in Sydney. He is the son of an Austrian father and German mother and he is the youngest of four children. He studied teaching at university and has taught at high school. Zusak lives in Sydney with his wife, daughter and son, and has taken up surfing.

Zusak began writing at the age of sixteen. The Underdog, his first novel, was published in 1999 and was followed by two sequels, Fighting Ruben Wolfe (2000) and When Dogs Cry (2001). Two subsequent novels The Messenger (2002) and The Book Thief (2005) have earned him international recognition.

Kate Grenville

The Australian writer Kate Grenville was born in Sydney. After graduating from Sydney University she worked in the film industry before living in Europe for several years and starting to write. In 1980 she went to the USA, where she did an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado. Her first book was a collection of short stories and has been followed by seven novels (Lilian’s Story, Dreamhouse, Joan Makes History, Dark Places, The Idea of Perfection, The Secret River and The Lieutenant) and four books about writing. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of New South Wales.

Andrew Greig

Andrew Greig was born in Bannockburn and brought up in Anstruther. He studied philosophy at Edinburgh University. He has written six books of poetry and five novels, including In Another Light, set in Orkney and Penang, which won the 2004 Saltire Society Book of the Year Prize. He has also written non-fiction, including climbing books and At the Loch on the Green Corrie, a book inspired by fellow-poet Norman MacCaig.

Natsume Sōseki

Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki was born in 1867. He studied English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. After teaching in schools for a time, he went to Britain for three years (including a visit to Pitlochry), and became a university lecturer on his return. He found fame in 1905 when he published Rondon tō (Tower of London) and started the serial Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat), and in 1907 he gave up his academic career to work on Asahi, a Tokyo newspaper. He is known for two trilogies, the first comprising Sanshirō, Sorekara (And Then) (which was filmed in 1985) and Mon (The Gate), the second comprising Higan sugi made (Until After the Equinox), Kōjin (The Wayfarer) and Kokoro (Heart); as well as his last two books, Michi kusa (Grass on the Wayside) and the unfinished Mei an (Light and Darkness). Sōseki died in 1916.

Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Trocchi was born in Glasgow in 1925. He attended Glasgow University, and served in the navy during the Second World War. Trocchi moved to Paris, where he edited the literary journal Merlin and wrote novels that fell into the ‘Beat Movement’ category as well as pornographic books published by Olympia Press. He also became addicted to heroin. After Paris he spent time in Taos NM and New York City. Trocchi was involved in the 60s counter-culture, participating in the Situationist International and conceiving his own Sigma project. He eventually settled in London where he sold second-hand books. Trocchi died in 1984. He is remembered as a controversial figure, perhaps best known for his reissued novels such as Young Adam, Cain’s Book and Thongs.

Andrew Murray Scott has written a biography, Alexander Trocchi: The Making of a Monster and edited Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader.