Albert Camus

Life Early years Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria.[7] His mother was of Spanish descent and could only hear out of her left ear.[8] His father, Lucien, a poor… >>

Pablo Neruda

Life and career Neruda as a young man Early years Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 350 km south of Santiago,[8] to José del Carmen… >>

Jean-Paul Sartre

Biography Early life Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer.[9] His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert… >>

Odysseas Elytis

Biography Descendant of the Alepoudelis, an old industrial family from Lesbos, Elytis was born in Heraklion on the island of Crete, on 2 November 1911. His family later moved to Athens, where the poet graduated from high school and later… >>

Nikos Kazantzakis

Biography Nikos Kazantzakis When Kazantzakis was born in 1883 in Heraklion, Crete had not yet joined the modern Greek state, (which had been established in 1832) and was still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. From 1902 to 1906… >>

Milan Kundera

Biography Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova ulice, 6 (6 Purkyně Street) in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971) was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček… >>

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ancestry Maria Fyodorovna Dostoyevskaya Mikhail Andreevich Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky’s parents were part of a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Ruthenian–Litvin noble family from the Pinsk region, with roots dating to the 16th century. Branches of the family included Russian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics… >>

Anton Chekhov

Biography Childhood Birth house of Anton Chekhov Young Chekhov in 1882 The Taganrog Boys Gymnasium in the late 19th century. The cross on top is no longer present. Portrait of young Chekhov in country clothes Young Chekhov (left) with brother… >>

William Shakespeare

Life Main article: Shakespeare’s life Early life William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[8] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and… >>