Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production.
Seven Samurai is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai action film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Taking place in 1586 in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, it follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who seek to hire samurai to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy described Ishiguro as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.
Yojimbo is a 1961 Japanese samurai film directed by Akira Kurosawa, who also co-wrote the screenplay and was one of the producers. The film stars Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katō, Takashi Shimura, Kamatari Fujiwara, and Atsushi Watanabe. In the film, a rōnin arrives in a small town where competing crime lords fight for supremacy. The two bosses each try to hire the newcomer as a bodyguard.
Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former married name, A. S. Byatt, was an English critic, novelist, poet and short-story writer. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages.
The Blackwater Lightship is a 1999 novel written by Irish novelist Colm Tóibín. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.
Dodes'ka-den is a 1970 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film stars Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura, and Shinsuke Minami. It is based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's 1962 novel A City Without Seasons and is about a group of homeless people living in poverty on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction book written by American chef Anthony Bourdain, first published in 2000. In 2018, following Bourdain's death, it topped the New York Times non-fiction paperback and non-fiction combined e-book and print lists.
Philip Blake Morrison FRSL is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. Since 2003, Morrison has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Helen Oyeyemi FRSL is a British novelist and writer of short stories.
Helen DeWitt is an American novelist. She is the author of the novels The Last Samurai (2000) and Lightning Rods (2011) and the short story collection Some Trick (2018) and, in collaboration with the Australian journalist Ilya Gridneff, has written Your Name Here. She lives in Berlin.
Diana Athill was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company Andre Deutsch Ltd.
Blonde is a 2000 biographical fiction novel by Joyce Carol Oates that presents a fictionalized take on the life of American actress Marilyn Monroe. Oates insists that the novel is a work of fiction that should not be regarded as a biography. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (2001) and the National Book Award (2000). Rocky Mountain News and Entertainment Weekly have listed Blonde as one of Joyce Carol Oates's best books. Oates regards Blonde as one of the two books she will be remembered for.
Lightning Rods is a 2011 novel by Helen DeWitt. It was DeWitt's second novel, following The Last Samurai. Though written immediately after The Last Samurai, it remained unpublished for more than a decade before it was published by New Directions.
Undermajordomo Minor is a 2015 novel by Canadian-born author Patrick deWitt. It is his third novel and was published by House of Anansi Press on September 5, 2015. The novel is a gothic fable set in an unspecified time and location that has been compared to 19th-century Central and Eastern Europe.
The English Understand Wool is a 2022 novella by American author Helen DeWitt. The novella was published by New Directions.
