Find out more about the greatest 20th Century Novelists, including William Gibson, Lady Colin Campbell, J. K. Rowling, Roald Dahl and David Foster Wallace
George R. R. Martin20 September 1948, American
Screenwriter, Novelist
J. K. Rowling31 July 1965, British
Author
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar28 May 1883, Indian
Independence Activist, Reformer
Ernest Hemingway21 July 1899, American
Journalist
J. R. R. Tolkien03 January 1892, British, South African
Writer
Dr. Seuss02 March 1904, American
Writer, Cartoonist
Leonard Cohen21 September 1934, Canadian
Singer-songwriter
George Orwell25 June 1903, British
Writer
Roald Dahl13 September 1916, British, Welsh
Novelist, Short Story Writer
Tom Clancy12 April 1947, American
Novelist
Margaret Atwood18 November 1939, Canadian
Writer, Environmental Activist
Virginia Woolf25 January 1882, British
Novelist
Hunter S. Thompson18 July 1937, American
Journalist and Author
Neil Gaiman10 November 1960, British
Author
H. G. Wells21 September 1866, British
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut11 November 1922, American
American writer
John Steinbeck27 February 1902, American
Author
Truman Capote30 September 1924, American
Author
Toni Morrison18 February 1931, American
Novelist
Haruki Murakami12 January 1949, Japanese
Charles Bukowski16 August 1920, German, American
Poet
Lawrence Durrell27 February 1912, British
Novelist
David Foster Wallace21 February 1962, American
Writer
Philip K. Dick16 December 1928, American
Novelist
Ian Fleming28 May 1908, British
Author of James Bond Series
James Baldwin02 August 1924, American
Novelist
J. D. Salinger01 January 1919, American
Writer
David Thewlis20 March 1963, British
Actor
John Grisham08 February 1955, American
American writer
Robby Benson21 January 1956, American
Actor
Harper Lee28 April 1926, American
Novelist
Ray Bradbury22 August 1920, American
Writer
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R. K. Narayan10 October 1906, Indian
Samuel Beckett13 April 1906, Irish
Novelist, Playwright, Theater Director
Simone de Beauvoir09 January 1908, French
Writer
Gore Vidal03 October 1925, American
William S. Burroughs05 February 1914, American
Novelist, Short Story Writer
Richard Belzer04 August 1944, American
Stand-up Comedian, Actor, Author
Paulo Coelho24 August 1947, Brazilian
Brazilian lyricist
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn11 December 1918, Russian, Russian
Author
Lucy Hawking02 November 1970, British
Journalist, Novelist, Writer
Colette28 January 1873, French
Novelist
Bruce Boxleitner12 May 1950, American
Actor
George Kennedy18 February 1925, American
Actor
James Patterson22 March 1947, American
Writer
Shirley Jackson14 December 1916, American
Author
Zelda Fitzgerald24 July 1900, American
Novelist
Kazuo Ishiguro08 November 1954, British
Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Nicholas Sparks31 December 1965, American
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk21 February 1962, American
Novelist & Journalist
Chinua Achebe16 November 1930, Nigerian
Nigerian novelist
Umberto Eco05 January 1932, Italian
Italian Semiotician, Philosopher
Dirk Blocker31 July 1957, American
Actor
Dee Dee Ramone18 September 1951, American
Musician
Joyce Carol Oates16 June 1938, American
Writer
Dalton Trumbo09 December 1905, American
Screenwriter, Novelist
Roxann Dawson11 September 1958, American
Actress
Philip Roth19 March 1933, American
Novelist
William Gibson17 March 1948, Canadian, American
Speculative Fiction Writer
Sterling Hayden26 March 1916, American
Actor
Evelyn Waugh28 October 1903, British
Writer
Jake Tapper12 March 1969, American
Journalist
Harlan Ellison27 May 1934, American
Writer
Isabel Allende02 August 1942, Chilean, Peruvian, American
Writer
Khushwant Singh02 February 1915, Indian
Novelist, Lawyer, Journalist & Politician
Danielle Steel14 August 1947, American
Novelist
Khaled Hosseini04 March 1965, American
Novelist
Mona Simpson14 June 1957, American
Author
William Golding19 September 1911, British
Novelist
Milan Kundera01 April 1929, Czech, French
Writer
Robert E. Howard22 January 1906, American
Pulp Fiction Writer
V. S. Naipaul17 August 1932, British
Writer
Vikram Seth20 June 1952, Indian
Writer
Jhumpa Lahiri11 July 1967, British, American
Writer
Bernard Cornwell23 February 1944, British
Author of Historical Novels
Anthony Burgess25 February 1917, British
Stefan Zweig28 November 1881, Austrian
Novelist
Alain de Botton20 December 1969, Swiss, British
Author
John Irving02 March 1942, American
Martha Gellhorn08 November 1908, American
Journalist & Writer
Shelby Foote17 November 1916, American
Writer
Philip Larkin09 August 1922, British
Poet
Saadat Hasan Manto11 May 1912, Pakistani
Writer
Doris Lessing22 October 1919, British
Novelist, Short Story Writer
Denise Nicholas12 July 1944, American
Actress
Saul Bellow10 June 1915, American
Novelist
Sandra Cisneros20 December 1954, American
Writer
Amrita Pritam31 August 1919, Indian
Writer
J. M. Coetzee09 February 1940, South African
Novelist, Author
Tove Jansson09 August 1914, Finnish
Novelist
Naguib Mahfouz11 December 1911, Egyptian
Novelist
Humayun Ahmed13 November 1948, Bangladeshi
Writer, Filmmaker
Dashiell Hammett27 May 1894, American
Novelist
Vera Brittain29 December 1893, British
Writer
Romain Gary21 May 1914, French
Diplomat
Tana French10 May 1973, Italian, American
Writer