Biographical notes

Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916) was a British writer who wrote under the pen name Saki. Munro is best known for his unsettling and cleverly constructed short stories, often with trick endings. Many of his stories satirize British society of the early 1900’s.

Robert Sheckley (1928) is a prominent american writer, famous for his short stories and novels. In all his novels Sheckley appeals to the description of modern society and the position of the individual in it.

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) lived a short life and left only two novels and two collections of short stories, which in her own words, were long in depth. She is a master of psychological prose. Most of her short stories are tragi-comic. Her manner of writing is characterized by the use of an artistic detail and implication.

Herbert Ernest Bates (1905-1974) was an English writer, best known for his short stories and novels.

William Saroyan (1908-1981) was an American writer of Armenian origin. He became known for plays and short stories that praise the common person’s ability to live a full, happy life in a world of ugly reality. Saroyan’s works show his belief in people’s basic innocence. Most are about poor, down-and-out people whose vitality and purity he praises.

Muriel Spark (b. 1918) started writing prose when she was well past forty. In the almost 30 years that have passed since she has published a dozen novels, several collections of short stories, numerous plays, critical studies, verse, etc.

Her satire is directed against the mediocre, the conventional, the common. Her style is witty and subtle, it is famous for its closeness to the sound of live speech.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), a well-known and prolific English novelist and essayist, whose early wittily satirical novels, such as Crome Yellow (1921), were followed by the more serious futuristic books, e.g. Brave New World (1932). Later, in 1937, when he came in the United Statesm, he became deeply interested in mysticism and parapsychology.

John Cheever (1912-1982) started literary career at the age of 16 and his first works appeared in The New Yorker. The experience he gained in early years provided material for his writings. Cheever is known in modern literature primarily as a story-teller. There is no “happy end” in his stories. They are characterized by deep psychological analysis of people’s lives and loves, marriages and divorces, lost hopes and aspirations. Cheever’s novel “The Wapshot Chronicle” (1958) got the National Book Award.

James Joyce (1882-1941) is one of the most significant English writers of the XX century, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. J. Joyce is widely known for the “stream-of-consciousness” technique, employed by him in his major novel “Ulysses” (1922). This technique gives the reader the illusion of following the character’s thoughts.

Janet Frame (b.1924) is a well-known New Zealand prose writer. Many of her works deal with the hopelessness of life brought about by age, loss of love, sickness, financial and moral disasters. She is a conscious stylist carefully selecting the most appropriate means to convey the true character of her personages and also her view of them.