Post-1945 novelists

Hanne Ørstavik

Hanne Ørstavik (born 1969) is a Norwegian novelist whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages and won the Gyldendal Prize in 2023.

Hans Erich Nossack

Hans Erich Nossack (1901–1977) was a German writer from Hamburg whose eyewitness report Der Untergang, written weeks after the 1943 firebombing of Hamburg, made him immediately famous.

Harry Mulisch

Harry Mulisch (1927–2010) was a Dutch novelist and one of the "Big Three" of postwar Dutch literature, best known for The Assault and The Discovery of Heaven.

Hasan Ali Toptaş

Hasan Ali Toptaş (born 1958) is a Turkish novelist and short-story writer whose dreamlike, poetic narratives, blurring dream and reality, made him a leading name in contemporary Turkish literature.

Heimito von Doderer

Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966) was an Austrian novelist whose Vienna novels Die Strudlhofstiege (1951) and Die Dämonen (1956) made him a major postwar German-language writer.

Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) was a German writer from Cologne associated with postwar rubble literature who won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first for a German writer in 43 years.

Hella S. Haasse

Hella S. Haasse (Hélène Serafia Haasse, 1918–2011) was a Dutch writer whose debut novella Oeroeg and historical novels made her one of the most translated Dutch authors.

Helle Helle

Helle Helle, born Helle Olsen in 1965 in Nakskov, is a Danish author known for spare, understated realism in everyday settings, winning major Danish prizes including the Critics' Prize.

Henri Queffélec

Henri Queffélec (1910–1992) was a French novelist and screenwriter, considered the great French-language maritime novelist of the 20th century, known for Un recteur de l'île de Sein.

Herbjørg Wassmo

Herbjørg Wassmo, born 1942 in Vesterålen, Norway, is a novelist and poet who won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1987 for Hudløs himmel, part of her Tora trilogy.

Herman Brusselmans

Herman Brusselmans is a Flemish novelist, poet, and columnist born in 1957 in Hamme, Belgium, who has published more than 75 books and writes a weekly column for Humo.

Herman Teirlinck (1879–1967) was a Flemish novelist, poet, playwright, and theater reformer, considered one of the best modern Flemish writers and the first laureate of the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren in 1956.

Herta Müller

Herta Müller, born 1953 in the Banat, Romania, is a German-Romanian novelist who emigrated to West Germany in 1987 and won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature for works on deportation and surveillance under dictatorship.

Hugo Claus

Hugo Claus, full name Hugo Maurice Julien Claus, was a leading Belgian novelist, poet, and playwright in Dutch, whose 1983 novel The Sorrow of Belgium became a classic of Flemish literature.

Ib Michael

Ib Michael is a Danish writer born in 1945 in Roskilde whose novels and travel books blend reality and fantasy, with his breakthrough coming in Kilroy, Kilroy (1989).

Icchokas Meras

Icchokas Meras (1934–2014) was a Lithuanian novelist and screenwriter of Jewish origin whose work centers on the Holocaust; he emigrated to Israel in 1972 and wrote only in Lithuanian.

Ignacio Aldecoa

Ignacio Aldecoa Isasi (1925–1969) was a Spanish writer of the postwar generación del 50, best known for his short stories and novels of social realism.

Imre Kertész

Imre Kertész is a Hungarian novelist who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a teen, becoming the first Hungarian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002.

Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare (1936-2024), Albania's most celebrated novelist, wrote The General of the Dead Army and The Palace of Dreams under Hoxha's dictatorship, fled to Paris in 1990, and won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize.

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Italian novelist and short-story writer of Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, Il barone rampante, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveller; Einaudi editor, ex-PCI partisan, regarded as a postmodernist master.

Ivan Klíma

Ivan Klíma, born Ivan Kauders, was a Czech novelist and playwright banned from publishing after the 1968 Soviet invasion who later won the 2002 Franz Kafka Prize.

Ivan Melezh

Ivan Melezh (Іван Мележ, 1921–1976) was a Belarusian Soviet prose writer best known for the trilogy Polesie Chronicle, which depicts collectivization in the Polesie marshlands and earned him the Lenin Prize in 1972.

Ivan Navumenka

Ivan Navumenka (Іван Якаўлевіч Навуменка, 1925–2006) was a Belarusian prose writer and literary scholar known for his partisan war trilogy, and chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR from 1985 to 1990.

Ivan Ptashnikau

Ivan Ptashnikau (Іван Пташнікаў) was a Belarusian prose writer, 1932 to 2016, a leading figure of Belarusian village prose whose novella Tartak opened the Khatyn theme.

Ivan Shamiakin

Ivan Shamiakin (Іван Пятровіч Шамякін; 1921–2004) was a Belarusian Soviet writer and screenwriter whose books sold more than 25 million copies; he was named People's Writer of the Byelorussian SSR in 1972.

Ivo Andrić

Ivo Andrić (Иво Андриć), 1892–1975, Yugoslav novelist and diplomat, 1961 Nobel laureate; wrote The Bridge on the Drina, Bosnian Chronicle, and The Woman from Sarajevo, published 1945.

J. J. Voskuil

J. J. Voskuil, also known as Han Voskuil, was a Dutch novelist and folklorist whose seven-volume, 5,500-page novel cycle Het Bureau sold nearly half a million copies.

J. M. G. Le Clézio

J. M. G. Le Clézio (Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio), French novelist born 1940 in Nice, 2008 Nobel Literature laureate; author of Le Procès-verbal, Désert, and Mauritius-rooted fiction.

Jaan Kross

Jaan Kross (1920–2007) was an Estonian prose writer, poet, and translator best known for The Czar's Madman (1978); his books were translated into twenty-two languages and sold over one million copies.