Continental European literary novelists

Romain Gary

Romain Gary (Roman Kacew, 1914–1980), French novelist, diplomat, and Free French pilot, only author to win the Prix Goncourt twice, in 1956 as Gary and in 1975 under the pseudonym Émile Ajar.

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) was a French novelist, dramatist, and musicologist who won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature, known for the ten-volume novel Jean-Christophe and his wartime pacifist writings.

Rosa Chacel

Rosa Chacel (1898–1994) was a Spanish novelist, essayist, diarist, and translator of the Generation of '27 who spent roughly three decades in exile after the Spanish Civil War.

Rudolf Hans Bartsch

Rudolf Hans Bartsch (1873–1952) was an Austrian novelist and former military officer, one of the most commercially successful popular novelists of pre-war and interwar Austria, best known for the Schubert novel Schwammerl (1912).

Rūdolfs Blaumanis

Rūdolfs Blaumanis (1863–1908) was a Latvian prose writer, playwright, and poet known for fine psychological analysis; his novellas and the play Indrāni are in the Latvian Culture Canon.

Sabahattin Ali

Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948) was a Turkish novelist, poet, and educator, a major figure of Republican-era literature, best known for Kürk Mantolu Madonna and stories of Anatolian villagers and laborers.

Sally Salminen

Sally Salminen (1906–1976) was a Finland-Swedish writer from Vårdö in the Åland Islands whose debut novel Katrina (1936), written while she worked as a maid in New York, sold 53,000 copies.

Salvatore Farina

Salvatore Farina (1846–1918) was an Italian novelist and journalist from Sardinia, based in Milan, hailed abroad as "the Italian Dickens" for his warm, humorous domestic fiction.

Samim Kocagöz

Samim Kocagöz (1916–1993) was a Turkish novelist, short-story writer, and teacher of the 1940 generation, best known for the War of Independence novels Kalpaklılar (1962) and Doludizgin (1963).

Sándor Márai

Sándor Márai (1900–1989), born in Kassa, was a leading Hungarian novelist and journalist who left communist Hungary in 1948; his novel Embers brought him posthumous international fame.

Sara Lidman

Sara Lidman (1923–2004) was a Swedish novelist from Västerbotten, known for the seven-novel Jernbanan suite and as the first woman to win the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Sara Stridsberg

Sara Stridsberg, born 1972 in Solna, Sweden, is a Swedish novelist, playwright, and translator whose 2006 breakthrough novel Drömfakulteten (The Faculty of Dreams) won the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Sasha Sokolov

Sasha Sokolov, pen name of Alexander Vsevolodovich Sokolov (Саша Соколов), is a Russian writer born 1943 in Ottawa, known for A School for Fools and two later novels.

Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940), Swedish author of Gösta Berlings saga and Nils Holgerssons underbara resa; first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) and first woman in the Swedish Academy (1914).

Sema Kaygusuz

Sema Kaygusuz is a Turkish writer of stories, novels, essays, and plays, born in 1972 in Samsun, whose novel Yere Düşen Dualar won international prizes.

Sergei Dovlatov

Sergei Dovlatov (Сергей Довлатов) was a Russian writer and journalist who emigrated to New York in 1978 and wrote twelve books, including The Compromise and The Zone.

Sholem Asch

Sholem Asch (שלום אש, 1880–1957), Yiddish novelist and playwright from Kutno, Poland; author of A shtetl, God of Vengeance, and the controversial Christian trilogy The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary.

Sigfrid Siwertz

Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970) was a Swedish novelist, poet, and playwright best known for Selambs (1920) and Mälarpirater (1911), serving in the Swedish Academy from 1932.

Sigrid Combüchen

Sigrid Combüchen is a Swedish novelist and literary critic, born in 1942 in Solingen, Germany, who debuted at eighteen in 1960 and won the August Prize for Spill in 2010.

Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949), Norwegian novelist and 1928 Nobel laureate in Literature, famous for the medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter; Catholic convert, Nazi-banned author, wartime exile in the USA.

Simon Vestdijk

Simon Vestdijk (1898–1971) was a Dutch novelist, poet, and essayist who gave up medicine in 1932 and wrote about two hundred books, including De koperen tuin.

Sjón

Sjón is the pen name of Icelandic author and poet Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, born 1962, whose novel The Blue Fox won the 2005 Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Sofía Casanova

Sofía Casanova was a Galician-born Spanish journalist, novelist, and poet, the first Spanish woman contracted as a war correspondent, reporting from Poland and Russia for ABC.

Solvej Balle

Solvej Balle (born 1962 in Bovrup, Denmark) is a Danish author known for experimental, minimalist fiction and the seven-volume novel On the Calculation of Volume, which won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022.

Sophie von La Roche

Sophie von La Roche, born Marie Sophie Gutermann (1730–1807), was a German novelist whose 1771 Sternheim made her the first German woman to publish a novel.

Steen Steensen Blicher

Steen Steensen Blicher (1782–1848) was a Danish writer and Lutheran pastor whose short stories about rural Jutland made him a founder of modern Danish prose and its first great realist.

Stefan Andres

Stefan Andres (1906–1970) was a German novelist and playwright, a left-Catholic author who spent the Nazi years in exile in Positano and wrote Wir sind Utopia there in 1941.

Stefan Heym

Stefan Heym, born Helmut Flieg (1913–2001), was a German writer and journalist who fled the Nazis, became a bestselling novelist in America, and settled in East Berlin in 1952 as the GDR's leading literary dissident.

Stefan Żeromski

Stefan Żeromski (1864–1925) was a Polish novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist hailed at his death as the "conscience of Polish literature", known for Syzyfowe prace, Popioły, and Przedwiośnie.