WORLD LITERATURE

Mark Pascasio BSIT 801

Biography Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe Born in Nigeria in 1930, Chinua Achebe attended the University of Ibadan. In 1958, his groundbreaking novel Things Fall Apart was published. It went on to sell more than 12 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe later served as the David and Marianna Fisher University professor and professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He died on March 21, 2013, at age 82, in Boston, Massachusetts. In a related endeavor, in 1967, Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, a renowned poet, co-founded a publishing company, the Citadel Press, which they intended to run as an outlet for a new kind of African-oriented children's books. Okigbo was soon killed, however, in the Nigerian civil war. Two years later, Achebe toured the United States with Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi, fellow writers, giving lectures at various universities. The 1960s also marked Achebe's wedding to Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961, and they went on to have four children. When he returned to Nigeria from the United States, Achebe became a research fellow and later a professor of English (197681) at the University of Nigeria. During this time, he also served as director of two Nigerian publishing houses, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. and Nwankwo-Ifejika Ltd. Biography Naguib Mahfouz Born in Cairo in 1911, Naguib Mahfouz began writing when he was seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939 and ten more were written before the Egyptian Revolution of July 1952, when he stopped writing for several years. One novel was republished in 1953, however, and the appearance of the Cairo Trilogy, Bayn al Qasrayn, Qasr al Shawq, Sukkariya (Betweenthe-Palaces, Palace of Longing, Sugarhouse) in 1957 made him famous throughout the Arab

world as a depicter of traditional urban life. With The Children of Gebelawi (1959), he began writing again, in a new vein that frequently concealed political judgments under allegory and symbolism. Works of this second period include the novels, The Thief and the Dogs (1961), Autumn Quail (1962), Small Talk on the Nile (1966), and Miramar (1967), as well as several collections of short stories. Until 1972, Mahfouz was employed as a civil servant, first in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, as Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and, finally, as consultant on Cultural Affairs to the Ministry of Culture. The years since his retirement from the Egyptian bureaucracy have seen an outburst of further creativity, much of it experimental. He is now the author of no fewer than thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles. Half of his novels have been made into films which have circulated throughout the Arabic-speaking world. In Egypt, each new publication is regarded as a major cultural event and his name is inevitably among the first mentioned in any literary discussion from Gibraltar to the Gulf. Biography of Hayashi Fumiko Hayashi lived an unsettled life until 1916, when she went to Onomichi, where she stayed until graduation from high school in 1922. In her lonely childhood she grew to love literature, and when she went out to work she started writing poetry and childrens stories in her spare time. Hayashis own experiences of hunger and humiliation appear in her first work, Hrki (1930; Diary of a Vagabond, published in English translation in Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Womens Literature), and Seihin no sho (1931; A Life of Poverty). Her stories of degradation and instability, depicting women who remained undaunted, commanded a strong following. Often near sentimentality, they are saved by a realistic and direct

style. She reached the peak of her popularity after World War II, when such stories as Daun taun (1948; Downtown, published in English translation in Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology) and Ukigumo (1949; Floating Cloud) mirrored the harsh postwar scene. Hayashi died suddenly of heart strain from overwork. Biography of TONY BUI He directed the independent film Three Seasons, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and became the only film ever to win both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize there. The film was based on Bui's own experiences dealing with the changing landscape and people of his ancestral home of Vietnam. The film starred Harvey Keitel. He also previously directed the highly successful short film Yellow Lotus, which also debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to play festivals all around the world. Tony has also produced Green Dragon, starring Patrick Swayze and Forest Whitaker, for his brother Tim Bui, as well as writing several screenplays for production companies. He is believed to be developing another feature film project. For a brief time he was associated with Lazarus, a film in development at Warner Brothers.