Famous American writers and their works. Who invented it: The most filmed American writers

Ahab never thinks, he only feels, he only feels; this is enough for every mortal. Thinking is impudence. To God alone belongs this right, this privilege. Reflection should be cool and quiet, but our poor hearts beat too hard, our brains are too hot for that.

"Moby Dick" - central work American romanticism. Epic story about Captain Ahab's furious hatred of the white sperm whale, bordering on madness, is full of Christian allusions and subtle metaphors. Through them, the entire spectrum of man’s relationships with God, the natural elements and himself is revealed.

In addition to the deep philosophical implications, the novel is valuable from a cultural and historical point of view. None of them fiction book you won't learn as much about whaling as you will from Melville's novel.

Love can't go astray unless it's real love, and not a frail freak, stumbling and falling at every step.

The strongest and deep romance London can be called partly autobiographical: there is a lot in common between the writer and Martin Eden. Perhaps this is why the book turned out to be so fascinating and philosophically problematic. The author tried to find answers to questions that worried him throughout his life.

"Martin Eden" is the most interesting attempt American literature combine European Nietzschean ethics with current religious and social-humanistic teachings. The novel gives the exact answer why it is pointless to wait for the arrival of a superman. From any side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Financial activity is an art, a complex set of actions of intellectual and selfish people.

The “Trilogy of Desire” cycle includes three works: “The Financier”, “The Titan” and “The Stoic”. The novels are united storyline and tell the story of the life of Frank Cowperwood, a successful capitalist of the early 20th century.

Dreiser not only provides a broad panorama of the socio-economic life of the United States at the turn of the century, but also reveals the moral and ethical problems of the capitalist world. The world in which we all live today.

He who wins a war will never stop fighting.

One of Hemingway's most famous novels intertwines themes of war and humanism. Pure, bright feeling between American soldier and an English nurse arises in conditions of a ruthless meat grinder. In it, feelings are destined to extinguish.

This anti-war novel is bright representative literature " lost generation" After reading it, you are imbued with such a strong disgust for the death that people sow that you understand that literature is the most effective remedy against war.

A person merges with the place where he lives.

The Great Depression in the United States led to a severe shortage of jobs, forcing residents of poor states to migrate to more prosperous areas in search of food. About one such family who was looking for better life, and the novel “The Grapes of Wrath” is narrated.

The miserable existence of American farmers, bordering on beggarly, is shocking and creates a completely unexpected image of America. The novel reveals the reality of the Great Depression, which cannot be found in the pages of any textbook on.

The boredom was terrible. And there was nothing to do but drink and smoke.

Salinger's novel has a huge impact on culture. He is perhaps the most famous work modernity. What made it so popular?

The answer is quite obvious: Salinger (in whom there was also a place for not the most censorious expressions) sharply and directly expressed the position of youthful rejection public values. Each of us went through the stage of this rejection, but each ultimately became a prisoner of the life imposed on him.

This book is longing for to a better world, so far from the real with its paradoxes, stupidities and complexities.

But what is sacred for Bokonists anyway?

In any case, as far as I know, not even a god.

So, nothing?

Only one.

Ocean? Sun?

Human. That's all. Just a man.

Any novel by a writer can rightfully be on this list. No one has understood the 20th century better than Vonnegut.

The madness and irrationality that ruled at this time reveal their existence in horror. And any war in general. What is the meaning of ethics, morality, religion, if the history of mankind is the history of wars and murders?

People weave their story as if they were tying strings around their fingers. Let this design be called "Cat's Cradle". Why? What's the difference, there's no cat in the cradle, just like there's no point in historical process, not really.

“Sinlessness” became a real sensation last year: it is called Franzen’s most scandalous and most Russian novel. Reasoning about acute social problems, the totalitarian nature of the Internet, feminism and politics are intertwined with deep, very personal history one family.

A young girl named Pip's life is a complete mess: she doesn't know her father, can't pay off her student debt, doesn't know how to build relationships, and has a boring job. But her life changes dramatically when she becomes an assistant to hacker Andreas Wulff, who loves nothing more than to publicly reveal other people's secrets.

2. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Richard Papen recalls his student days at a private college in Vermont: he and several of his friends attended a private course by an eccentric teacher on ancient culture. One prank of an elite circle of students ended in a murder, which only at first glance remained unpunished.

After the incident, other secrets of the heroes are revealed, which lead to new tragedies in their lives.

3. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

Most famous novel Ellis is already considered modern classics. Main character- Patrick Bateman, a handsome, rich and seemingly intelligent young man from Wall Street. But behind the good looks and expensive suits lies greed, hatred and rage. At night, he tortures and kills people in the most sophisticated ways, without a system and without a plan.

4. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer

A touching story from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy Oscar. His father died in one of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. While examining his father's closet, Oscar finds a vase, and in it is a small envelope with the inscription "Black" and a key inside. Inspired and filled with curiosity, Oscar is ready to go around all the Blacks in New York to find the answer to the riddle. This is a story about overcoming bereavement, post-disaster New York, and human kindness.

5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

"The Catcher in the Rye" o modern teenagers- this is how critics dubbed Stephen Chbosky’s book, which sold a million copies and was filmed by the author himself.

Charlie is a typical quiet person, a silent observer of what is happening, turns into high school. After recent nervous breakdown he closed in on himself. To overcome his inner feelings, he begins to write letters. Letters to a friend, an unknown person - the reader of this book. On the advice of his new comrade Pete, he tries to become “not a sponge, but a filter” - to live life to the fullest, and not watch her from the side.

6. "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham

The story of one day in three lives women from different eras from a Pulitzer Prize winner. The destinies of the British writer Virginia Woolf, the American housewife Laura from Los Angeles and the publishing editor Clarissa Vaughan, at first glance, are connected only by the book - the novel Mrs. Dalloway. But by the end it becomes clear that the lives and problems of the heroines, despite everything external differences, are the same.

7. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Nick and Amazing Amy - perfect couple. But on the day of the fifth anniversary, Amy disappears from the house - there are all traces of abduction. The whole city goes in search of the missing woman and sympathizes with Nick until Amy's diary falls into the hands of the police, because of which her husband becomes the main suspect in the murder. The main intrigue of the novel is who was the real victim in this situation.

Flynn's novel attracts with its unconventional view of modern marriage: partners marry beautiful projections of each other and then are very surprised when behind the invented image a living person is discovered, whom they do not know at all.

8. Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade, Kurt Vonnegut

The writer's difficult war experience is reflected in this novel. Memories of the bombing in Dresden are shown through the eyes of the absurd, timid soldier Billy Pilgrim - one of those foolish children who were thrown into a terrible war. But Vonnegut would not be himself if he had not also introduced an element of fantasy into the novel: either due to post-traumatic syndrome, or due to alien intervention, Pilgrim learned to travel in time.

Despite the fantastic nature of what is happening, the message of the novel is quite real and clear: Vonnegut ridicules stereotypes about “real men” and demonstrates the pointlessness of wars.

9. “Beloved,” Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison got Nobel Prize in literature for the fact that in “her novels full of dreams and poetry she revived important aspect American reality." And Time magazine named the novel “Beloved” one of the 100 best books in English.

The main character is the slave Sethe, who, along with her children, escaped from her cruel masters and remained free for only 28 days. When the chase overtakes Sethe, she kills her daughter with her own hands - so that she does not know slavery and does not experience the same thing as her mother. The memory of the past and this terrible choice haunts Sethe all her life.

10. A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin

Fantasy epic about magical world Seven kingdoms, where the struggle for Iron Throne, while a terrible winter approaches the entire continent. On this moment Five novels out of a planned seven have been published. The remaining two parts are awaited by both fans of the writer’s work and fans of “”, a series based on the saga that is breaking all popularity records.

1. Jerome Salinger - “The Catcher in the Rye”
A classic writer, a mystery writer, who at the peak of his career announced his retirement from literature and settled far from worldly temptations in a remote American province. Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, became a turning point in the history of world literature. Both the title of the novel and the name of its main character, Holden Caulfield, became a code word for many generations of young rebels.

2. Nell Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
The novel, first published in 1960, was a resounding success and immediately became a bestseller. This is not surprising: Harper Lee, having learned the lessons of Mark Twain, found her own style of storytelling, which allowed her to show the adult world through the eyes of a child, without simplifying or impoverishing it. The novel was awarded one of the most prestigious awards USA in Literature - Pulitzer Prize, published in multi-million copies. It has been translated into dozens of languages ​​around the world and continues to be republished to this day.

3. Jack Kerouac - “On the Road”
Jack Kerouac gave a voice to an entire generation in literature for his short life managed to write about 20 books of prose and poetry and became the most famous and controversial author of his time. Some branded him as a subverter of foundations, others considered him a classic modern culture, but from his books all the beatniks and hipsters learned to write - to write not what you know, but what you see, firmly believing that the world itself will reveal its nature. It was the novel On the Road that brought Kerouac worldwide fame and became a classic of American literature.

4. Francis Scott Fitzgerald - "The Great Gatsby"
The best novel by the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald, a poignant story of eternal dreams and human tragedy. According to the author himself, “the novel is about how illusions are wasted, which give the world such color that, having experienced this magic, a person becomes indifferent to the concept of true and false.” The dream that Jay Gatsby is captivated by, coming into direct contact with ruthless reality, breaks down and buries the hero who believed in it as truth under its rubble.

5. Margaret Mitchell - " gone With the Wind»
The Great Saga of Civil War in the USA and about the fate of the wayward and ready to go over heads Scarlett O'Hara was first published 70 years ago and does not become outdated to this day. "Gone With the Wind" - the only novel Margaret Mitchell, for which she, a writer, emancipator and women's rights advocate, received a Pulitzer Prize. This book is about how love in life happens. more important than love; then, when the breakthrough to survival is successfully completed, love becomes preferable, but without love of life, love also dies.

6. Ernest Hemingway - “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
Full of tragedy is the story of a young American who came to Spain, engulfed in civil war.
Brilliant and sad book about war and love, true courage and self-sacrifice, moral duty and the enduring value of human life.

7. Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451

(25.09.1987 – 06.07.1962)

Known as the master of new American prose XX century. Originally from New Albany, Mississippi. William received an incomplete secondary education and took special courses at the University of St. Mississippi. Served in the Royal air force Canada in the First World War.

William Faulkner's most successful book is The Sound and the Fury. His works also brought him fame: “Absalom, Absalom!”, “Light in August”, “Sanctuary”, “When I Lay Dying”, “Wild Palms”. The novels “The Parable” and “The Kidnappers” were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Louis Lamour

(22.03.1908 – 10.06.1988)

Born in Jamestown (North Dakota) in the family of a veterinarian. Since childhood I loved to read. Literary path started from poems and stories that he published in magazines. He changed many jobs: animal driver, boxer, lumberjack, sailor, gold miner.

Lamour is known as an excellent creator of Westerns. The first of them is “ The Town No Guns Could Tame" (1940). He often published books under various pseudonyms (Tex Burns, Jim Mayo).

Lamour's story "The Gift of Cochise", which he later turned into the novel "Hondo", is very popular. A film of the same name was created based on this novel. Other successful books Louis Lamour: “The Quick and the Dead,” “The Devil with a Revolver,” “The Kiowa Trail,” “Sitka.”

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

(24.09.1896 – 21.12.1940)

He was born in St. Paul (Minnesota) into a wealthy Irish family. Studied at St. Paul Academy, Newman School, and Princeton University. I already started writing there. He married Zelda Sayre, with whom he hosted lavish receptions and parties.

He was an author of famous magazines, wrote stories and scripts in Hollywood. Fitzgerald's first book, This Side of Paradise (1920), had big success. In 1922, he created the novel “Beautiful but Doomed,” and in 1925, “The Great Gatsby,” which critics recognized as a masterpiece of American literature of that time.

Fitzgerald’s works are also special in that they perfectly convey the atmosphere of the American “jazz era” of the 1920s (a term coined by the writer himself).

Harold Robbins

(21.05.1916 – 14.10.1997)

Real name: Francis Kane. Originally from New York. Some sources say that Francis grew up in an orphanage. Mastered different professions, but managed to get rich briefly by trading sugar. After going broke, he worked at Universal.

The first book, Never Love a Stranger, was banned in several American states and was published in 1948. Robbins' fame was brought to him by the action-packed nature of his works. The most famous books Francis Kane: Carpetbaggers, A Stone for Danny Fisher, Sin City, 79 Park Avenue.

Harold Robbins became literary example For three generations American writers, and films have been made based on many of his novels.

Stephen King

He received the nickname “King of Horror” for his amazing works in the genres of horror, mysticism, science fiction, and fantasy.

Born in Portland (Maine) in the family of a merchant seaman. Stephen has been interested in mystical comics since childhood and began writing in school. Works as a teacher and actor. Many of his books have become international bestsellers, and some of his works have been filmed.

Such novels by Stephen King as “Mr. Mercedes”, “11/22/63”, “Renaissance”, “Under the Dome”, “Dreamcatcher”, “Land of Joy”, and the epic “” are widely known. Now, being disabled, he continues to write.

Sydney Sheldon

(11.02.1917 – 30.01.2007)

Born in Chicago (Illinois). Since childhood I wrote poetry. He worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, writing musicals for the Broadway theater. Sidney Sheldon's first work, "Tear off the Mask" (1970), was a huge success and brought the author an Edgar Allan Poe Award.

The writer appeared in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of translations of his works and received a personalized star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mark Twain

(30.11.1835 – 21.04.1910)

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is an American writer and journalist. Originally from Florida (Missouri).

From the age of 12, Samuel worked as a typesetter and created his own articles. Having reached adulthood, he goes on a journey, reads a lot and works as a pilot's assistant. He was a Confederate and worked in the mines, where he began to write stories.

All his works were signed by the pseudonym Mark Twain. Clemens wrote a famous book called “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, the story “The Prince and the Pauper”, the novel “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, and after opening his own publishing house, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “Memoirs” and others were published brilliant works of a recognized classic of the 19th century, a master of adventure literature.

Ernest Hemingway

(21.07.1899 – 02.07.1961)

World-famous writer and journalist. Born in Oak Park (Illinois) in the family of a doctor. From an early age he was interested in sports, fishing, hunting and literature. After graduating from school, he worked as a reporter.

Hemingway was not accepted into the army, but he voluntarily took part in the First World War, where he was seriously wounded. His first book is Three Stories and Ten Poems. The writer distinguished himself with specific abilities to create in the style of realism and existentialism.

His life, full of travel and adventure, was reflected in many famous works: “The Old Man and the Sea”, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, “A Farewell to Arms!” etc. In 1954, Ernest Hemingway deservedly received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Daniela Steele

Master romance novels. Born in New York into a well-to-do family. She received her education at the French School of Design and New York University.

She worked as a copywriter and PR specialist. The first novel "Home", conceived in student years, was published only in 1973.

Almost all further books Danielle Steele became bestsellers. Most books to read writers are considered novels: “His bright light», « Family bonds", "Night of Magic", " Forbidden love", "Diamond Bracelet", "Voyage".

A considerable amount. Danielle Steele is the proud recipient of the French Legion of Honor.

Dr. Seuss

American writers- the authors who created American literature, the youngest literature in the world. Appearing in late XVIII century, it began to develop intensively in the 19th and 20th centuries. This literature is steeped in the romanticism of creating a new world, a new person and new relationships. The list of the most famous American writers and their works is far from complete, but we are working... If you read a work and really liked it, then let us know and we will publish it on the site.

Their best books, stories and stories can be read in Russian and English. We also suggest looking best film adaptations works. For English language learners there are short adapted stories, films with subtitles and cartoons in English, as well as free lessons in English online.

American writers and their works (classics)

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Full of mysticism and adventurism, stories about American pioneers from the founder of American literature, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in English and Russian.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Read best stories representative of American romanticism and the founder of the modern detective story - Edgar Allan Poe, author poem "Raven"(). The most famous stories writer - Black Cat, Gold Bug, Murder in the Rue Morgue.

O. Henry / O. Henry (1862-1910)

American Don Quixote, sad storyteller of the 20th century, master of an unexpected denouement and a certainly good ending - O. Henry. His most famous stories are Gifts of the Magi, The Last Leaf.

Jack London (1876-1916)

The most famous American writer is a man who went from the “abyss to the top” and made himself, the author of the series "Northern Stories" and novel "Martin Eden". The most famous stories - Love of life, Build a fire, Piece of meat.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2011)

A great science fiction writer who captivated his readers in bright world fantasy, author famous works Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine.

That's not all American writers who brought glory to their country. Materials on our website have not yet been published Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway and some others. The gap will definitely be filled.