Robert Pinget was born in 1920 in Geneva. His first collection of stories, Between Fantoine and Agapa, was pubished in 1951. Pinget has written more than 30 books: novels, plays, and "notebooks." His last book, Taches d'Encre came out in 1997, the year he died. Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) is acknowledged as one of the most influential of modern French writers, having helped determine the shape of twentieth-century French literature, especially in his role with the Oulipo, a group of authors that includes Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Harry Mathews, among others. John Updike's novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. He died of lung cancer in 2009, at age 75.
