626 articles
Valery Larbaud
Valery Larbaud was a French writer, critic, and translator, born and died in Vichy, who made Joyce known in France and wrote under the pseudonym A. O. Barnabooth.
Vasco Pratolini
Vasco Pratolini (1913–1991) was an Italian novelist and screenwriter whose fiction of working-class Florence made him a major voice of Italian neorealism; his novels include Cronache di poveri amanti and Metello.
Vasil Bykau
Vasil Bykau (Belarusian: Васіль Быкаў, 1924–2003) was a Belarusian writer, considered the leading Belarusian author of the post-Stalin period, known for war fiction centered on moral choice.
Vasily Aksyonov
Vasily Aksyonov (Василий Аксёнов, 1932–2009) was a Soviet and Russian novelist and playwright, a leading voice of the 1960s youth prose who was stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1981.
Vasily Grossman (Василий Семёнович Гроссман)
Vasily Grossman (Василий Семёнович Гроссман, 1905–1964), Soviet writer and Red Star war correspondent; author of Life and Fate, the Stalingrad epic seized by the KGB in 1961 and published abroad in 1980.
Vasily Shukshin (Василий Макарович Шукшин)
Vasily Shukshin (Василий Макарович Шукшин, 1929–1974), Soviet writer, film director, and actor from Srostki, Altai. Leading figure of village prose; director of Kalina krasnaya and Pechki-lavochki; USSR State Prize and Lenin Prize laureate; died filming Oni srazhalis za Rodinu.
Vasyl Stefanyk
Vasyl Stefanyk (Василь Стефаник, 1871–1936) was a Ukrainian prose writer, publicist, and political figure from Galicia who wrote 59 short novellas about peasant life, a classic of early Ukrainian modernism.
Veijo Meri
Veijo Meri (1928–2015) was a Finnish prose modernist writer known for war themes without heroism; his debut novel Manillaköysi (1957) was translated into nearly 20 languages.
Venedikt Erofeev
Venedikt Erofeev (Венедикт Васильевич Ерофеев; 1938–1990) was a Soviet-era Russian writer best known for the prose poem Moscow–Petushki, a samizdat classic about a drunkard's train journey.
Veniamin Kaverin
Veniamin Kaverin (Вениамин Каверин; born Veniamin Zilber, 1902–1989) was a Soviet Russian prose writer best known for the adventure novel Two Captains, winner of the 1946 Stalin Prize.
Vergílio Ferreira
Vergílio Ferreira, born Vergílio António Ferreira, was a Portuguese novelist, essayist, and diarist, a leading existentialist writer of the 20th century who won the 1992 Camões Prize.
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) was a Spanish novelist and republican politician from Valencia whose war novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse became an international bestseller.
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo (1802–1885), French poet, novelist, and playwright, leader of French Romanticism, author of Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables, Académie française member, exile on Guernsey, buried in the Panthéon.
Victoria Benedictsson
Victoria Benedictsson, born Victoria Maria Bruzelius and writing under the pen name Ernst Ahlgren, was a Swedish author of the 1880s realist movement known for Pengar and Fru Marianne.
Victoria Kielland
Victoria Kielland (born 1985) is a Norwegian author from Fredrikstad, best known for her breakthrough novel Mine menn (2021), a reimagining of the life of Belle Gunness.
Vigdís Grímsdóttir
Vigdís Grímsdóttir (born 1953 in Reykjavík) is an Icelandic author whose novels about women and outsiders blend realism with Icelandic folklore; she won the Icelandic Literary Prize in 1994.
Vikenty Veresaev
Vikenty Veresaev (born Smidovich) was a Russian and Soviet writer and physician best known for his autobiographical Notes of a Doctor, which sparked a 1901 medical-ethics controversy.
Viktor Nekrasov
Viktor Nekrasov (1911–1987) was a Soviet Russian-language writer whose 1946 novella In the Trenches of Stalingrad won a Stalin Prize; he later became a dissident and died in exile in Paris.
Viktor Pelevin
Viktor Pelevin, born in Moscow in 1962, is a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose satire blending Buddhism and consumer culture made him one of post-Soviet Russia's most widely read authors.
Viktor Rydberg
Viktor Rydberg, full name Abraham Viktor Rydberg (1828–1895), was a Swedish novelist, poet, and scholar, known for Singoalla, his Bible-critical theology, and Germanic mythology studies.
Vilhelm Moberg
Vilhelm Moberg (1898–1973) was a Swedish novelist and dramatist, best known for the Emigrant tetralogy, at the center of the 1930s golden age of Swedish working-class literature.
Vilis Lācis
Vilis Lācis, real name Jānis Vilhelms Lācis (1904–1966), was a Latvian novelist, best known for The Fisherman's Son, and head of government of the Latvian SSR from 1940 to 1959.
Villy Sørensen
Villy Sørensen (1929–2001) was a Danish author, philosopher, critic, and translator, a central figure of Danish modernism who won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1974.
Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Korolenko (Владимир Короленко), 1853 to 1921, was a Russian short-story writer and publicist of Ukrainian-Polish parentage known for stories of exiles set in Siberia and Ukraine.
Vladimir Makanin
Vladimir Makanin (Владимир Маканин, 1937–2017) was a Russian novelist and short-story writer, one of the leading post-Soviet prose writers, known for Caucasian Prisoner and The Underground, or a Hero of Our Time.
Vladimir Nabokov (Владимир Набоков)
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Владимир Набоков), 1899–1977, Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and lepidopterist; émigré pen name Vladimir Sirin; author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and The Gift.
Vladimir Odoevsky
Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky (1803 or 1804–1869) was a Russian prince, writer, philosopher, pedagogue, and music critic, best known for his philosophical novel Russian Nights (1844).
Vladimir Sorokin
Vladimir Sorokin (Владимир Сорокин, born 1955) is a Russian writer of novels, plays, and screenplays whose grotesque, experimental satire of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia includes The Queue and Day of the Oprichnik.
Vladimir Voinovich
Vladimir Voinovich (Владимир Войнович, 1932–2018) was a Russian writer and prominent Soviet-era dissident, best known for the satirical novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin.
Vsevolod Garshin
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855 to 1888) was a Russian short-story writer famous for "Four Days" and "The Red Flower", admired for tales of war, injustice, and mental illness.