Curated playlist
Modernist writers
- F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 believing his work was forgotten. The Great Gatsby later sold millions.
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- André BretonSurrealist founder André Breton once wrote that firing a revolver blindly into a crowd was the simplest surrealist act.
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner never told his daughter he had won the Nobel Prize. She heard it when the principal called her in.
- James JoyceJames Joyce's novel Ulysses was banned for obscenity in the UK and US, yet copies were smuggled.
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
- Albert CamusAlbert Camus thanked his old schoolteacher right after his mother when he won the Nobel Prize.
- Dylan ThomasDylan Thomas left his own 39th birthday party after an hour, too ill to stay. Within two weeks the Welsh poet was dead.
- André GideA 1924 defense of his sexuality kept André Gide from ever being nominated to the Académie Française.
- Franz KafkaFranz Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything he had written. Brod refused.
- Hermann HesseHermann Hesse's biggest audience came after he died. His novels became U.S. paperback bestsellers by the mid-1960s.
- Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett once drove a young André the Giant to school. The future wrestler was a boy in rural France then.
- Karel ČapekNazi agents came to arrest Karel Čapek months after he had already died. They found only his wife, Olga.
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineManuscripts of French novelist Céline, missing since 1944, were handed to police in March 2020.
- Andrei BelyIn Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg, a young man is assigned to kill his own father. The target is a government official.
- Luigi PirandelloNobel winner Luigi Pirandello gave his medal to the government to be melted down.
- Mikhail BulgakovStalin phoned banned playwright Mikhail Bulgakov in 1930 and asked if he wanted to leave.
- Leopoldo LugonesHow did poet Leopoldo Lugones go from Socialist to supporter of Fascism?
- Maxim GorkyWriter Maxim Gorky visited a Soviet labor camp that had been staged for him, and he did not notice.
- Miguel de UnamunoA famous 1936 speech by Miguel de Unamuno may have been invented. A historian says a 1941 magazine article wrote it.