Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2003.
Vernon God Little (2003) is a novel by DBC Pierre. It was his debut novel and won the Man Booker Prize in 2003. It has twice been adapted as a stage play.
Lyudmila Evgenyevna Ulitskaya is an internationally acclaimed modern Russian novelist and short-story writer who, in 2014, was awarded the prestigious Austrian State Prize for European Literature for her oeuvre. In 2006 she published Daniel Stein, Interpreter(Даниэль Штайн, переводчик), a novel dealing with the Holocaust and the need for reconciliation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She won the 2012 Park Kyong-ni Prize.
Hanif Kureishi is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He is known for his novels My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia.
Alan James Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and for his novel The Line of Beauty the 2004 Booker Prize. Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his six novels since 1988.
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White, and Under the Skin (2000) which was adapted for film by Jonathan Glazer, starring Scarlett Johansson. His novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, was published in 2020. His book, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, a non-fiction work about music, came out in October 2023.
John Whitbourn is an English author of novels and short stories focusing on alternative histories set in a 'Catholic' universe. His works are characterised by wry humour, the reality of magic and a sustained attempt to reflect on the interaction between religion and politics on a personal and social scale. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) says he "writes well, with dry wit".
Michael John Harvey is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
The Triffids were an Australian alternative rock and pop band, formed in Perth in Western Australia in May 1978 with David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved some success in Australia, but greater success in the UK and Scandinavia in the 1980s before disbanding in 1989. Their best-known songs include "Wide Open Road" and "Bury Me Deep in Love". SBS television featured their 1986 album, Born Sandy Devotional, on the Great Australian Albums series in 2007, and in 2010 it ranked 5th in the book The 100 Best Australian Albums by Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O'Donnell.
Piers Paul Read FRSL is a British novelist, historian and biographer. He was first noted in 1974 for a book of reportage, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, later adapted as a feature film and a documentary. Read was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he studied history.
Martin J. Goodman is an English journalist and writer.
Ludmila's Broken English is the second novel by Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre. It was published in March 2006.
David Richard McComb was an Australian musician. He was the singer-songwriter and guitarist of the Australian bands, The Triffids (1976–89) and The Blackeyed Susans (1989–93). He also had a solo career including leading David McComb and The Red Ponies. Over his career McComb had bouts of alcoholism, and amphetamine and heroin abuse. He developed cardiomyopathy and in 1996 underwent a heart transplant. David McComb died on 2 February 1999 "due to heroin toxicity and mild acute rejection of his 1996 heart transplant", according to the coroner. In May 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, named "Wide Open Road" by The Triffids – written by McComb – as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. On 1 July 2008 The Triffids were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame with McComb's contribution acknowledged by a tribute performance.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".
Martyn Paul Casey is an English-born Australian rock bass guitarist. He has been a member of the Triffids, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. Casey plays either his Fender Precision Bass or Fender Jazz Bass.
Canongate Books is an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Niall Lucy was an Australian writer and scholar best known for his work in deconstruction.
Katja Eichinger is a German author and journalist.
Love in Bright Landscapes: The Story of David McComb of the Triffids is a feature-length documentary, depicting the life and times of late Australian songwriter David McComb best known for his work with the Triffids, a band he co-founded in Perth, Western Australia. The Triffids were active between 1978 and 1990.
