Continental European literary novelists

Margriet de Moor

Margriet de Moor, pen name of Margaretha Maria Antonette Neefjes, is a Dutch novelist born in 1941 whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Marguerite Yourcenar, born Marguerite de Crayencour, was a French novelist and essayist who wrote Mémoires d'Hadrien and in 1980 became the first woman elected to the Académie française.

Maria Dąbrowska

Maria Dąbrowska, born in 1889 near Kalisz, was a Polish novelist and diarist best known for the four-part family saga Noce i dnie (Nights and Days).

María de Zayas

María de Zayas (1590, Madrid – ca. 1660) was a Spanish novelist of the Siglo de Oro, best known for Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos.

Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício

Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício (1884–1947) was a Portuguese writer of fiction, poetry, and essay, the first Portuguese woman nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Marie Luise Kaschnitz

Marie Luise Kaschnitz, née von Holzing-Berstett (1901–1974), was a German poet and writer of stories, radio plays, and diary prose who won the Georg-Büchner-Preis in 1955.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) was an Austrian writer, the leading woman of letters of the Habsburg Empire, whose masterpiece 'Das Gemeindekind' (1887) is a landmark of German-language realism.

Mark Aldanov

Mark Aldanov (Марк Александрович Алданов), born Mark Aleksandrovich Landau, was a Russian émigré novelist and trained chemist, best known for fiction and essays bitterly critical of the Soviet system.

Marko Vovchok

Marko Vovchok, pen name of Mariia Olexandrivna Vilinska, was a Ukrainian writer whose 1857 collection Folk Tales made her the most prominent female writer in nineteenth-century Ukrainian literature.

Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, 1740–1814), French aristocrat, libertine novelist, and atheist philosopher; author of Justine, Juliette, Philosophy in the Boudoir, and the 120 Days of Sodom; his name gave the word sadism.

Marthe Bibesco

Marthe Bibesco, born Princess Marthe Lahovary, was a Franco-Romanian aristocratic writer who chronicled European royalty in French and won the French Academy Grand Prize in 1954.

Martin Andersen Nexø

Martin Andersen Nexø (1869–1954) was a Danish proletarian novelist and communist whose Pelle the Conqueror became the second most widely distributed Danish literary work after H.C. Andersen.

Martin Walser

Martin Walser (1927–2023) was a German novelist, playwright, and essayist and a leading figure of postwar German literature, known for works like Ein fliehendes Pferd.

Mateo Alemán

Mateo Alemán (1547–1614) was a Spanish novelist of the Siglo de Oro, remembered for Guzmán de Alfarache, the novel that gave the picaresque genre its full form.

Mati Unt

Mati Unt (1944–2005) was an Estonian writer, essayist, and theater director whose innovative prose shaped modernist and postmodernist Estonian literature; his best-known novel is Sügisball (1979).

Matilde Serao

Matilde Serao (1856–1927) was an Italian journalist and novelist, one of the first women journalists of post-Unification Italy, who co-founded Il Mattino and wrote over forty books about Naples.

Max Aub

Max Aub (Max Aub Mohrenwitz) was a Spanish writer, born in Paris in 1903, known for the six-novel cycle El laberinto mágico about the Spanish Civil War.

Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky (Maxim Gorky; real name Alexei Maximovich Peshkov), 1868-1936, Russian and Soviet novelist, playwright, and founder of socialist realism, author of The Lower Depths, Mother, and the autobiographical trilogy, never a Communist Party member.

Mendele Mocher Sforim

Mendele Mocher Sforim (מנדלי מוכר ספרים) was the pen name of Shalom Yaakov Abramovitch, a Yiddish and Hebrew writer regarded as the grandfather of both modern literatures.

Mercè Rodoreda

Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (1908–1983) was a Catalan novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright, the most translated Catalan fiction author; her novel La plaça del Diamant appeared in 37 languages.

Michel Butor

Michel Butor (1926–2016) was a French novelist, essayist, and poet associated with the nouveau roman, known for La Modification, winner of the 1957 Prix Renaudot.

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq (Michel Thomas), French novelist and poet born 1956 on Réunion; author of Les Particules élémentaires, Plateforme, Soumission, and Goncourt winner La Carte et le territoire; known for succès de scandale reception and prizes.

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), Spanish author of Don Quixote (two parts, 1605 and 1615), also wrote the twelve Exemplary Novels; fought at Lepanto in 1571, returned from captivity in 1580, and is honored by the April 23 Cervantes Prize.

Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes (Miguel Delibes Setién, 1920–2010) was a Spanish novelist and journalist whose work centers on rural Castile; he won the Premio Cervantes in 1993.

Miguel Torga

Miguel Torga, pen name of Adolfo Correia Rocha (1907–1995), was a Portuguese poet, short-story writer, and physician, remembered for his sixteen-volume Diário and stories of Trás-os-Montes.

Mihail Sadoveanu

Mihail Sadoveanu (born Mihail Ursachi, 1880–1961) was a major Romanian novelist and academician, author of Baltagul, Hanu-Ancuței, and Frații Jderi; elected to the Romanian Academy in 1921 and later a communist-era political figure.

Mika Waltari

Mika Waltari (1908–1979) was a Finnish author whose historical novel The Egyptian (1945), set in ancient Egypt, became the highest-selling Finnish novel worldwide and was filmed in 1954.

Mikael Niemi

Mikael Niemi (born 1959) is a Swedish author from Pajala in Norrbotten whose comic and crime novels draw on the Tornedalian region, best known for Popular Music from Vittula.

Mikhail Bulgakov (Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков)

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков), 1891–1940, Russian writer, playwright, and trained doctor. Author of The Master and Margarita, The White Guard, and The Heart of a Dog; his work was censored under Stalin and mostly published posthumously, with the key novel appearing censored in 1966–67.