Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) was a Belgian-French novelist and essayist, best known for her Memoirs of Hadrian. Born in Brussels, into a wealthy family of noble descent, Marguerite enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Living at the family…

Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles. These are the first words of the Iliad. Together with the Odyssey, it is the earliest and greatest work of literature from classical antiquity. Written around the 8th century…

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French novelist, poet, and politician, mostly known for his novels The Hunchback of the Notre-Dame and his magnum opus Les Misérables, both of which have enjoyed countless adaptations for musical,…

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a French novelist and playwright, mostly known for his historical novels such as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts in northern France, as…

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was an Austrian-Jewish journalist and novelist, mostly known for his novel Radetzky March. He grew up in Brody, a town on the eastern outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he learned to…

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss poet and novelist. Born in the Black Forest town of Cawl, in southern Germany, as the son of an Estonian father and French-Swiss mother, Hesse experienced from a young…