Intellect PlusWriters
1,873 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 32 of 32.
Chekhov said writers should state problems, not solve themThe Taganrog-born physician (1860–1904) wrote four stage classics and reinvented the short story. After The Seagull flopped in 1896 he quit theatre—until Stanislavski's Moscow Art…
Artaud's meningitis diagnosis at five was probably wrongBorn in Marseille on 4 September 1896 to first-cousin parents with Smyrna roots, Antonin Artaud became a cross-media French artist of page and stage. Biographer David Shafer doubt…
Poland's bard wrote empire-shaking verse in exileAdam Mickiewicz, born 24 December 1798, stands as national poet for Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus and one of Polish Romanticism's Three Bards. Dziady and the epic Pan Tadeusz fue…
Marathon's veteran taught Athens how tragedy worksAeschylus, born about 525 BC in Eleusis, is often called tragedy's father because Western scripts begin in bulk with him. He wrote some seventy to ninety plays; only seven survive…
Torquay's home-schooled writer still tops translationsAgatha Christie, born 15 September 1890 in Devon, produced sixty-six detective novels and fourteen Poirot or Miss Marple short-story collections under her first married name. UNES…
Algiers goalkeeper won literature's Nobel at forty-fourAlbert Camus, born 7 November 1913 in poor Mondovi, French Algeria, wrote novels and essays that fed absurdism—and heard existentialist labels he often refused. He took the 1957 N…
India's greatest Sanskrit poet may never have existed as one personKalidasa, writing before the fifth century CE during the Gupta era, produced three plays, two epic poems, and two lyric poems that define classical Sanskrit literature. Abhijnanas…
Murakami ran a jazz bar before his first novelHaruki Murakami, born 12 January 1949, is read in 50 languages, yet he wrote nothing at all until he was 29. He was running a Tokyo jazz bar when a baseball game sparked his first…
Heine's exile made him Europe's witty liberal symbolHeinrich Heine (1797–1856), born Harry into a Düsseldorf Jewish family, became Germany's sharpest lyric ironist. Early Romantic songs made him famous abroad; later satire got his …
Flaubert's protégé perfected the ruthless short storyGuy de Maupassant (1850–1893) remains France's short-story benchmark: lean prose, clean endings, often set in the Franco-Prussian War's shadow. His mother introduced him to Gustav…
Hafez turned wine and love into spiritual double meaningsShams-od-Din Mohammad Hafez of Shiraz (about 1325–1390) remains a summit of Persian lyric poetry. His Divan of ghazals braids the beloved, wine, and hypocrisy so that earthly tave…
Han Yu ranked first among Tang-Song prose mastersHan Yu (768–824) rebuilt classical prose as a Confucian weapon against empty ornament and rival teachings. Ming critic Mao Kun placed him first among the Eight Great Prose Masters…
Andersen wrote one hundred fifty-six fairy talesHans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) turned a poor Odense childhood into stories that now exist in more than 125 languages. Nine volumes hold 156 fairy tales that stuck in Western …