Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP Photo/TT (2012)
Sample of authors
Akunin, Boris
Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of the Russian writer and translator Grigory Chkhartishvili of Georgian-Jewish origin. He was born in Zestaponi, Georgian USSR. His father was an officer and his mother a teacher. When Chkhartishvili was two years old, the family left Georgia and moved to Moscow where he grew up and attended school, majoring in English. Having become fascinated by Japanese culture...
Painting by Henry L. Gates (1927)
Sample of authors
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Scottish author with Irish ancestry, born in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, worked as a civil servant, but was also a painter and illustrator. He was sickly, become seriously alcoholic over the years and was admitted into psychiatric care in 1885. He died in 1893. It was Arthur’s mother, Mary, born Foley, who instead held the family together, struggling to give her son a good e...