Non-fiction

Authors writing about the world.

People in Non-fiction

33 profiles

Writer

Maya Angelou

Writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Writer

George Orwell

Writing Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Writer

Jack London

Writing The Call of the Wild and White Fang.

Writer

Virginia Woolf

Writing Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.

Writer

Alice Walker

Writing The Color Purple.

Writer

John Steinbeck

Writing The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.

Writer

Gabriel García Márquez

Writing One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Writer

James Baldwin

Writing incisively about race, identity and belonging in America.

Writer

Jorge Luis Borges

Creating labyrinths, imaginary books and philosophical short stories.

Writer

H. G. Wells

Imagining time travel, alien invasion and invisible men.

Writer

Truman Capote

Writing Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.

Writer

Gore Vidal

Writing sharp political essays and novels that re-examined American history, power and sexuality.

Writer

Arundhati Roy

Writing the Booker-winning The God of Small Things and outspoken political essays.

Writer

C. S. Lewis

Creating The Chronicles of Narnia and writing influential explanations of Christian belief.

Writer

Annie Ernaux

Writing The Years and autobiographical books connecting private memory with class and social history.

Writer

Svetlana Alexievich

Creating books from eyewitness voices about war, Chernobyl and the Soviet aftermath.

Writer

Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Writing The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.

Writer

P. Sri Acharya

Writing Tamil literary studies and a prize-winning biography of Ramanuja.

Writer

Ahmed Taymour

Collecting Arabic manuscripts and documenting literary and popular traditions.

Writer

Thi. Ka. Sivasankaran

Writing Tamil literary criticism and encouraging new writers through Thamarai.

Writer

Taha Hussein

Modernising Arabic literary criticism and advocating broader education.

Writer

G. N. Devy

Documenting India’s languages and writing After Amnesia.

Writer

Mi. Pa. Somasundaram

Writing the Tamil travelogue Akkarai Cheemayil Arumadhangal.

Writer

A. S. Gnanasambandan

Writing Tamil literary criticism on Kamban and devotional literature.

Writer

C. S. Lakshmi

Writing Tamil fiction as Ambai and documenting women’s lives.

Historian

Rai San'yō

Writing the Japanese historical work Nihon Gaishi.

Writer

Rajshekhar Basu

Bengali satire as Parashuram and the dictionary Chalantika

Writer

R. P. Sethu Pillai

Tamil scholarship and the essay collection Tamil Inbam

Writer

Jacqueline Kahanoff

Essays on Levantine identity and coexistence

Writer

Verrier Elwin

Anthropological writing and advocacy concerning India’s tribal communities.

Writer

Gita Krishnankutty

Translating Malayalam literature into English.

Writer

Ki. Va. Jagannathan

Interpreting Tamil literature and editing Kalaimagal.

Writer

Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri

Interpreting the Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas in Bengali.