Mahasweta Devi’s books, which include Breast Stories and Old Women, center around political, economic,and humanitarian causes in the tribal communities of West Bengal. Devi was awarded the Jnanpath, India’s highest literary award, in 1995.
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Ludmila Ulitskaya is a Russian author, screenwriter, and biochemist. Her books, which include Medea and Her Children and The Funeral Party, focus on the themes of death and human consciousness.
Grigory Sysoyev, ITAR-TASS / Landov
James Kelman is a British writer who won the Booker Prize in 1994 for How Late It Was, How Late. In addition to several novels, Kelman is the author of several short stories, a television screenplay,and has written for radio and theater.
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Peter Carey has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction twice, for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988, and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001. Carey’s newest novel, His Illegal Self, was released last year.
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When V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the committee honored him for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” The Trinidadian writer won a Booker Prize for his book In a Free State in 1971.
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Ngugi Wa Thiong'O is a Kenyan author and playwright who was jailed without charge in 1977 and placed in a maximum security prison. There, he wrote several novels, including Devil on the Cross.
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Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian author whose books focus on themes of Latin American politics and society. His novels include Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral.
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American author Joyce Carol Oates is the author of numerous books, including Blonde, The Falls, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her novel, Them, won the National Book Award in 1970.
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Evan S. Connell has written several notable books in his 50-year career, including the 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge and 1969 follow-up Mr. Bridge, both satirical and insightful portraits of upper middle class life. His nineteenth book, Lost in Uttar Pradesh: New and Selected Stories draws upon the short stories, essays,and poems of his career.
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Arnošt Lustig, a Czech author who survived Auschwitz, has written many books, including Night and Hope and A Prayer for Katerina Horowitzowa, about the Holocaust. In 2008, Lustig won the Franz Kafka Prize, and is a two-time winner of the Jewish National Book Award.
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Antonio Tabucchi is an Italian novelist whose books include Letter from Casablanca, Little Misunderstandings of No Importance, and Dreams of Dreams. He was nominated for a Booker Prize in 2005.
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Dubravka Ugresic is a Croatian writer who, after war broke out in her country in 1991, began writing about the criminality of war. She was declared a public enemy and left the country in 1993. She is most famous for her book Steffie in the Jaws of Life.
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Alice Munro is a Canadian author whose short stories focus on the quotidian of human life. She is a three-time winner of Canada’s Governor General Award for fiction. Her books include Lives of Girls and Women, and Runaway.
