
Sample of authors
Beckett, Simon
English author whose crime novels have become more popular in other countries – including Scandinavia and Germany – than at home. Simon Beckett was born in a working-class family in Sheffield, and graduated with a B.A. in English from Sheffield Polytechnic (now Hallam University) and subsequently gained an M.A. at Newcastle University. He then worked for several years as a janitor and for a whi...

Sample of authors
Auster, Paul
American author from a Jewish family, born in Newark, New Jersey. His parents, Queenie and Samuel Auster, came from Poland. His father worked as a landlord. The family lived a simple middle-class life, but the marriage was unhappy. Queenie was thirteen years younger than Samuel when she married, and the couple were on the whole strangers to each other. Queenie Auster wanted to leave her husband,...