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Asian, African, and world novelists: Surnames Ll to Y

468 articles

Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey (1928–1995) was a Caribbean novelist, poet, and broadcaster born in Panama to Jamaican parents. At the BBC he championed West Indian writers and co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement in London in 1966.

Ángeles Mastretta

Ángeles Mastretta, full name María de los Ángeles Mastretta Guzmán, is a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, and journalist born in Puebla in 1949, known for Arráncame la vida and Mal de amores.

Ango Sakaguchi

Ango Sakaguchi (坂口安吾, 1906–1955), real name Sakaguchi Heigo, was a Japanese novelist and essayist in the Buraiha decadent school, best known for his 1946 essay "Discourse on Decadence."

Antônio Sales

Antônio Sales (1868–1940) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, journalist, and politician from Ceará, best known for founding the Padaria Espiritual in 1892 and for the novel Aves de arribação.

Anuradha Sharma Pujari

Anuradha Sharma Pujari (অনুৰাধা শৰ্মা পূজাৰী; born 1964 in Jorhat, Assam) is an Assamese novelist, essayist, and journalist who edits the weekly Sadin and won the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Award.

Anwar Sajjad

Anwar Sajjad (انور سجاد; 1934–2019) was a Pakistani Urdu fiction writer, playwright, and physician, a leading modernist known for symbolic short stories like Gaae and for PTV plays.

Arishima Takeo

Arishima Takeo (有島武郎) was a Japanese novelist and essayist of the Shirakaba school, best known for Aru onna; in 1922 he gave his Hokkaido farm to its tenants.

Armijn Pane

Armijn Pane (1908–1970) was an Indonesian writer and journalist who co-founded the magazine Pujangga Baru in 1933 and wrote Belenggu (1940), a landmark of pre-war Indonesian fiction.

Armonía Somers

Armonía Somers was the pen name of Armonía Liropeya Etchepare Locino (1914–1994), a Uruguayan writer whose erotic 1950 novel La mujer desnuda caused an unprecedented scandal.

Arturo Uslar Pietri

Arturo Uslar Pietri (1906–2001) was a Venezuelan writer, journalist, and politician considered the leading figure of twentieth-century Venezuelan literature, known for the novel Las lanzas coloradas and the phrase "Sembrar el petróleo."

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy (born 1961, Shillong) is an Indian novelist, essayist, and activist whose debut The God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize, sold over 6 million copies, and led to her career in political nonfiction.

Asai Ryōi

Asai Ryōi (浅井了意, ca. 1612–1691) was a Japanese writer and Jōdo Shinshū priest of the early Edo period, best known for the ghost-story collection Otogi-bōko (1666).

Astrid Roemer

Astrid Roemer (1947–2026) was a Surinamese-Dutch writer of novels, poetry, and drama, best known for her decolonization trilogy Onmogelijk moederland and as the first Surinamese winner of Dutch literature's highest awards.

Augusto Monterroso

Augusto Monterroso, born José Augusto Monterroso Bonilla, was a Guatemalan writer, master of microfiction, best known for the one-sentence story "El dinosaurio" and exiled in Mexico from 1944.

Ayako Sono

Ayako Sono (曽野綾子) was a Japanese Catholic novelist and essayist whose fiction explored war, society, and religion, and who chaired the Nippon Foundation from 1995 to 2005.

Aziz Nesin

Aziz Nesin (Mehmet Nusret Nesin, 1915–1995) was a Turkish humorist, novelist, and publisher, founder of Markopaşa and the Nesin Foundation, author of Zübük and Yaşar Ne Yaşar Ne Yaşamaz.

Bahaa Taher

Bahaa Taher (بهاء طاهر), sometimes transliterated Bahaa Tahir, was an Egyptian novelist and translator who won the first Arabic Booker in 2008 for Sunset Oasis, dying in 2022 at 87.

Bahram Sadeghi

Bahram Sadeghi (بهرام صادقی, 1937 to 1985) was an Iranian physician, poet, and modernist fiction writer best known for his novella Malakut (1961), a landmark of twentieth-century Persian fiction.

Baltasar Lopes da Silva

Baltasar Lopes da Silva, who wrote poetry as Osvaldo Alcântara, was a Cape Verdean writer and lawyer who co-founded Claridade in 1936 and wrote the novel Chiquinho (1947).

Banana Yoshimoto

Banana Yoshimoto (吉本ばなな; real name Yoshimoto Mahoko) is a Japanese novelist born in Tokyo in 1964, best known for her debut Kitchen (1987) and fiction about loss and healing, published in over 30 countries.

Banaphool

Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, best known by his pen name Banaphool, was an Indian Bengali writer and physician who wrote hundreds of short stories, novels, and plays.

Bảo Ninh

Bảo Ninh (Hoàng Ấu Phương, born 1952) is a Vietnamese novelist, author of Nỗi buồn chiến tranh (The Sorrow of War), translated into about 20 languages, winner of the 1994 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and 2016 Simhun Prize.

Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024), Pakistani Parsi novelist, author of Cracking India (Ice-Candy-Man) and The Crow Eaters; wrote five novels on Partition, Parsi identity, and women, adapted by Deepa Mehta.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is a Franco-Rwandan writer of novels, short stories, and poetry whose work centers on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, memory, and exile between generations.

Ben Okri

Ben Okri, born in Nigeria in 1959, is a Nigerian-born British novelist and poet whose novel The Famished Road won the 1991 Booker Prize, making him its first Black and youngest winner.

Benito Lynch

Benito Lynch (Benito Eduardo Lynch) was an Argentine novelist and short-story writer of gauchesca literature, known for Los caranchos de La Florida and El inglés de los güesos.

Bhabendra Nath Saikia

Bhabendra Nath Saikia (ভবেন্দ্ৰনাথ শইকীয়া) was an Assamese novelist, short story writer, playwright, and film director from Assam, India, who won the 1976 Sahitya Akademi Award and a Rajat Kamal for each of his seven films.

Bhagabati Charan Panigrahi

Bhagabati Charan Panigrahi (1908–23 October 1943) was an Odia writer, editor, and political organizer who founded the Nabajuga Sahitya Samsad and pioneered communism in Odisha.

Bhagwati Charan Verma

Bhagwati Charan Verma (भगवतीचरण वर्मा; 1903–1981) was a Hindi novelist, playwright, and poet best known for Chitralekha, and a winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Bhushan.

Bhagwati Kumar Sharma

Bhagwatikumar Sharma (ભગવતીકુમાર શર્મા) was an Indian writer and journalist who wrote in Gujarati and won the 1988 Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Asooryalok.