Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
Paul Edward Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.
Hastings Kamuzu Banda was the leader of Malawi from 1964 to 1994. He served as Prime Minister from independence in 1964 to 1966, when Malawi was a Dominion / Commonwealth realm. In 1966, the country became a republic and he became the first president as a result, ruling until his defeat in 1994.
Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, conservationist, citizen scientist ornithologist, artist and illustrator, educator, and a founder of the 20th-century environmental movement, where he was an inspiration for many.
The music of Malawi has historically been influenced by its triple cultural heritage of British, African, and American music. Malawians, known for their history as travellers and migrant workers, have contributed to the spread of their music across the African continent, blending it with various musical forms. A significant factor in this musical amalgamation was World War II, during which soldiers transported music to distant lands and brought it back, leading to the popularity of guitar and banjo duos as dance bands by the war's end. Both instruments were imported. Additionally, Malawians working in mines in South Africa and Mozambique influenced the fusion of music styles, giving rise to genres such as Kwela.
Scott O'Dell was an American writer of 26 novels for young people, along with three novels for adults and four nonfiction books. He wrote historical fiction, primarily, including several children's novels about historical California and Mexico. For his contribution as a children's writer he received the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1972, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. He received The University of Southern Mississippi Medallion in 1976 and the Catholic Libraries Association Regina Medal in 1978.
Yatuta Chisiza was a Malawi minister of home affairs who led a brief guerrilla incursion into the country in October 1967. He is considered one of the most important figures in pre and post colonial politics in Malawi.
Charles William Foran is a Canadian writer in Toronto, Ontario.
No Love for Johnnie is a 1961 British drama film in CinemaScope directed by Ralph Thomas. It is based on the 1959 book of the same title by the Labour Member of Parliament Wilfred Fienburgh, and stars Peter Finch.
Joshua Then and Now is a Canadian novel written by Mordecai Richler, published in 1980 by McClelland and Stewart. A semi-autobiographical novel, the book is based his life on his neighborhood growing up in Montreal, Quebec, and tells of the life of a writer. Richler later adapted the novel into the feature film Joshua Then and Now, starring James Woods, Alan Arkin, and Gabrielle Lazure; directed by Ted Kotcheff who had previously directed Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.
John Coyne is an American writer. He is the author of more than 25 nonfiction and fiction books, including a number of horror novels, and his short stories have been collected in "best of" anthologies such as Modern Masters of Horror and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. A former Peace Corps volunteer and a lifelong lover of golf, he has edited and written books dealing with both subjects, including The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan, The Caddie Who Played With Hickory, and The Caddie Who Won the Masters. His most recent book is the love story Long Ago and Far Away.
Tony D'Souza is an American novelist, journalist, essayist, reviewer, travel, and short story writer. He has published three novels with the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt including: Whiteman (2006), The Konkans (2008), and Mule (2011).
Melanie Sumner is an American writer and college professor. She was acclaimed as one of "America's Best Young Novelists" in 1995. Writer Jill McCorkle says, "She comes to her characters with this wealth of knowledge. She's so well-versed in those wonderful little details that make up Southern towns. She has such a rich expanse of her fictional turf wildly varied and yet always occupied with this kind of social manners and morals and taboos."
Malawian cannabis, particularly the strain known as Malawi Gold, is internationally renowned as one of the finest sativa strains from Africa. According to a World Bank report it is among "the best and finest" marijuana strains in the world, generally regarded as one of the most potent psychoactive pure African sativas. The popularity of this variety has led to such a profound increase in marijuana tourism and economic profit in Malawi that Malawi Gold is listed as one of the three "Big C's" in Malawian exports: chambo, chombe (tea), and chamba (cannabis).
Millroy the Magician is a novel by American writer Paul Theroux. It was published in 1993 by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and by Random House the following year in the US, where it was chosen as one of the New York Times notable books of the year. The novel has been identified as one of the best of the 1990s. It is a satire of American consumer culture and love of fast food, and contains elements of parable and magic realism.
The Malawi Defence Force is the state military organisation responsible for defending Malawi. It originated from elements of the British King's African Rifles, colonial units formed before independence in 1964.
The Mosquito Coast is a novel by author Paul Theroux. Published in 1981, it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year.
Jamie Holmes is an American author. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Slate, among many other publications. Holmes has written two books. The first, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, was published by Penguin Random House (Crown) in 2015 and explores the psychology of uncertainty. He is also the author of 12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon, about the creation of the proximity fuse, which was published on August 4, 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Girls At Play is the third novel by American author Paul Theroux published in 1969 by Houghton Mifflin in the US and by The Bodley Head in the UK. It is set in 1967 in a girls school in Kenya.
