270 literature Hanoi; Norman Mailer, author of Armies of the Night; James Michener; Chaim Potok; J D Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye; John Updike, author of Rabbit, Run and The Witches of Eastwick; Gore Vidal, author of Myra Breckenridge and historical novels; and Richard Wright, author of The Outsider In recent years the writer who has achieved the largest number of sales has been Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code Cowboy books have always been popular Historical novelists include Steven Saylor, author of the Roma SubRosa novels featuring Gordianus “the finder;” and surgeon and novelist Frank Slaughter War stories include those by Irwin Shaw, author of The Young Lions; and Herman Wouk, author of The Caine Mutiny, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952 Crime writers such as Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood; Patricia Highsmith; and Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather have also sold many copies of their books Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov, fantasy writers such as Ursula Le Guin, and horror writers such as Stephen King have sold well There have been many popular writers such as V C Andrews; Clive Cussler; John Grisham; Thomas Harris; Robert Ludlum, author of The Bourne Identity; satirist P J O’Rourke; Danielle Steel; and Kathleen Windsor, author of Forever Amber Playwrights include Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible; Eugene O’Neill, whose Long Day’s Journey into Night was published posthumously in 1956; Thornton Wilder who started writing in the 1920s but whose plays included The Matchmaker; and Tennessee Williams whose most famous works such as A Streetcar Named Desire were written in the 1940s, and who won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Mention should also be made of Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, his first full-length play There have also been many important nonfiction writers, including Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring (1963); political commentator Noam Chomsky; economist and Professor J K Galbraith; and John Gunther, author of the “Inside” books American poets include Robert Lowell, Ogden Nash, and Sylvia Plath other authors in english Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, there have been many other Nobel laureates, including Samuel Beckett from Ireland, in 1969, author of Waiting for Godot; Patrick White from Australia, in 1973; Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, in 1986; Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, in 1991 (and the Booker Prize in 1974); Derek Walcott from St Lucia, in 1992; Seamus Heaney from Ireland, in 1995; and J M Coetzee, author of The Life and Times of Michael K, from South Africa, in 2003 Prolific South African writer Bryce Courtney, author of The Power of One, moved to Australia Irish writers include Brendan Behan, author of Borstal Boy; James Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man; Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes; and William Trevor, author of The Old Boys Australian writers include Thea Astley; Peter Carey; Albert Facey; feminist Germaine Greer; Xavier Herbert, author of Poor Fellow My Country; George Johnston, author of My Brother Jack; Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark; Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds; David Malouf, author of Fly Away Peter; Alan Moorehead, author of The White Nile; poet Les Murray; Neville Shute (pseudonym for Nevil Shute Norway); Christina Stead; Arthur Upfield, creator of the aboriginal detective “Bonaparte”; and Morris West, author of The Devil’s Advocate and The Ambassador New Zealand writers include Janet Frame, author of Owls Do Cry, crime writer Ngaio Marsh, and Alan Duff, author of Once Were Warriors The writer most strongly identified with South Africa is Wilbur Smith, who set most of his books in South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Other South African authors include Stuart Cloete, author of Rags of Glory, and Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country There have also been many Canadian authors, perhaps the most famous from this period being novelist Margaret Atwood and Thomas Costain european and south american writers French writers since 1950 include Nobel laureates Franỗois Mauriac (1952), Algerian-French writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1957), diplomat and poet Saint-John Perse (1960), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964; he declined the prize), and Claude Simon (1985) Other famous writers of this period include writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir; structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, author of Anthropologie structurale; André Malraux; historical novelist Zoë Oldenburg; and Jean Tardieu Belgian writer Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret and wrote over 500 books; and Frenchman Gerard de Villiers wrote the best-selling “S.A.S.” murder mysteries set in various countries around the world Writers in Germany who won the Nobel Prize in literature include GermanSwedish writer Nelly Sachs, in 1966; Heinrich Böll, in 1972; Günter Grass for The Tin Drum, in 1999; and Austrian feminist playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, in 2004 Mention should also be made of Bul-