Bookish birthdays for the week of November 10, 2024

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of November 10, 2024.

Neil Gaiman (November 10, 1960): Gaiman’s novels, graphic novels, comic books, and other fiction have won numerous honors, including the Newbery and Carnegie medals and the Hugo and Nebula awards; among his most famous and beloved works are American Gods, Coraline, and the Sandman series.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (November 11, 1821): Dostoevsky’s novels — including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov — are considered some of the best ever written, and his writing is also noted for accurately predicting how Russian revolutionaries would behave in power. 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922): Vonnegut broke into the literary scene with the still-popular Cat’s Cradle (which he submitted to the University of Chicago as a thesis, earning him a master’s in anthropology) and cemented his fame with Slaughterhouse-Five.

Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850): Stevenson is best known for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island, which he invented as a game for his stepson.

Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930): Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, is among the world’s most widely read African novels (if not the most read); he received the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 for his entire career of work.