Fiction writers: novelists and genre

Armando Palacio Valdés

Armando Palacio Valdés (1853–1938) was a Spanish realist novelist and critic, a member of the Real Academia Española best known for La hermana San Sulpicio.

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.

Armistead Maupin

Armistead Maupin, born 1944, is an American novelist best known for the Tales of the City series, which began as a San Francisco newspaper serial in the 1970s.

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.

Arnaldur Indriðason

Arnaldur Indriðason, born 1961 in Reykjavík, is an Icelandic crime writer whose Detective Erlendur novels made him the best-known Icelandic author internationally, with over 20 million books sold.

Arne Garborg

Arne Garborg, born Aadne Garborg, was a Norwegian writer, journalist, and translator, a farmer's son from Jæren who became a leading Nynorsk advocate and author of Bondestudentar and Haugtussa.

Arno Otto Schmidt (1914–1979) was a German novelist, essayist, and translator, one of postwar German literature's most idiosyncratic experimental writers, best known for the three-column monumental novel Zettel's Traum.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (Enoch Arnold Bennett, 1867-1931), English novelist, playwright and journalist of the Staffordshire Potteries, author of The Old Wives' Tale, the Clayhanger trilogy and the Five Towns fiction, attacked by Virginia Woolf and later reappraised.

Arnold Zweig

Arnold Zweig (1887–1968) was a German-Jewish novelist and anti-war writer whose 1927 novel Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa became a defining war novel of the Weimar Republic.

Arnon Grunberg

Arnon Grunberg, full name Arnon Yasha Yves Grünberg, is a Dutch writer born in Amsterdam in 1971 whose novel Tirza won the Gouden Uil and Libris prizes.

Arnošt Lustig

Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011) was a Czech Jewish novelist, screenwriter, and professor who survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, wrote over twenty Holocaust books, and won the 2008 Franz Kafka Prize.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), British science fiction author and futurist, co-writer of 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposed geostationary communication satellites in a 1945 Wireless World article and lived in Sri Lanka from 1956.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, was a Scottish writer and physician who created Sherlock Holmes and also wrote historical novels and spiritualist works.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), Hungarian-British novelist and science writer, author of Darkness at Noon and The Act of Creation; communism, Spanish Civil War imprisonment, parapsychology bequest at Edinburgh.

Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947), Welsh author born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, wrote The Great God Pan, The Three Impostors, and The White People, helped found weird fiction, and influenced Lovecraft, King, and Borges; his 1914 tale The Bowmen spawned the Angel of Mons legend.

Arthur van Schendel

Arthur van Schendel (1874–1946) was a Dutch novelist, born in Batavia and long resident in Italy, whose Holland novels made him one of the most honored Dutch writers of the 1930s.

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.

Arvid Järnefelt

Arvid Järnefelt (1861–1932) was a Finnish jurist turned novelist and Tolstoyan social reformer who abandoned his legal career in 1891 and wrote the acclaimed debut novel Isänmaa (1893).

Arvo Valton

Arvo Valton, pen name of Arvo Vallikivi (1935–2024), was an Estonian writer considered a founder of Estonian modern prose, known for grotesque stories satirizing the Soviet regime.

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).

Ashani Lewis

Ashani Lewis is a British writer whose debut novel, Winter Animals (2024), won the 2025 Betty Trask Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award; her story collection Everest followed in 2024.

Ashapurna Devi

Ashapurna Devi (আশাপূর্ণা দেবী; 1909–1995) was an Indian Bengali novelist who received the Jnanpith Award in 1976 and is best known for the Satyabati trilogy of feminist novels.

Ashokamitran

Ashokamitran (அசோகமித்திரன்), born Tyagarajan in 1931 in Secunderabad, was a Tamil novelist and short story writer who won the 1996 Sahitya Akademi award; he died in 2017.

Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar (1936–2015), pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayène, was an Algerian novelist and filmmaker who wrote on Algerian women and in 2005 became the first North African member of the Académie française.

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.

Atin Bandyopadhyay

Atin Bandyopadhyay (অতীন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়) was an Indian writer of Bengali literature, born in 1934 in what is now Bangladesh, best known for his Partition novel Nilkantha Pakhir Khonje.

August Gailit

August Gailit (1891–1960) was an Estonian novelist and short-story writer, best known for Toomas Nipernaadi (1928) and Ekke Moor, and a founding member of the Siuru literary group of 1917.

August Šenoa

August Šenoa (1838–1881) was a Croatian novelist, poet, and journalist of Zagreb, regarded as the founder of the modern Croatian novel, best known for the historical novel Zlatarovo zlato (1871).