About The Author - Quick Insight (Trying to narrow down my Choices)

Italo Calvino (1923-1985)

• Born in Cuba, lived in Italy.
• Jounalist and a writer of short stories and novels.
• Best known work includes 'Our Ancestors' trilogy, the 'Cosmicomics' collection of short stories and novels 'Invisible Cities' and 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller'.
• Inspired by folk tales and oral storytelling.
• Modern/postmodern.
• 'Invisible Cities' - a collection of short stories with one overarching narrative (fiction).

Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

• English author, comic radio dramatist and musician.
• Best known for the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' series (originally started on the radio).
• He co-wrote some of the Doctor Who television series.
• Interested in the environment and technology.
• Science-fiction.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

• German language novelist and short story writer. 
• His writing fuses realism and the fantastic together.
• Interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety and absurdity.
• Best known writing is 'The Metamorphosis', 'The Trial' and 'The Castle'.
• He only published a few short stories and never finished any of his novels.

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

• Irish novelist, playwright, theatre director and poet.
• His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature with black comedy and gallows humour.
• Considered one of the last modernists. 
• Best known for 'Waiting for Godot', which has been interpreted as a somber summation on man's never ending search for meaning.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976)

• Best selling fiction writer of all time. 
• She write 80 crime novels and 14 plays, as well as many other books.
• Often used familiar settings in her stories.
• Many of the murders in her novels involved poison. 
• Best known books are 'And then there were None' and 'Murder on the Orient Express'. 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

• Brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, as well as women coming back from the dead.
• Short stories, novels, textbooks and hundreds of essays. 
• Acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story.
• Best known for his tales of terror and his haunting poetry.
• Poe is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure that lurks in old cemeteries.  

Susan Songtag (1933-2004)

• American novelist, critical essayist, cultural analyst and film-maker. 
• Best known for writing such as 'On Photography, 'Illness as Metaphor' and 'The Volcano Lover'.
• Non-fiction.
• 'On Photography'(a collection of 6 essays) focuses on how photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art.

Harper Lee (1926-2016)

• American novelist.
• Literature and fiction. 
• Wrote 'To Kill a Mockingbird' which she saw as a simple love story.
• Based on her observations of family and friends, based in her hometown.
• The novel was inspired by the racist attitudes of the ear (especially based on an incident that happened in her hometown.

Wole Soyinka (1934-Present)

• Nigerian playwright and poet.
• He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and it's struggle for independence with Great Britain.
• Best known for 'Death and the King's Horsemen' and 'The Years of Childhood'.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

• English author and journalist.
• Marked by intelligence and wit, as well as an awareness of social injustice. 
• Between 1941-1943 he worked on propaganda for the BBC.
• Best known for books '1984' and 'Animal Farm'.