Clicking on a subject will lead to the titles discussing it. Hundreds of thousands of people are mentioned in our pages, so only those who are the main topics of a book get a listing here. Names are given in their commonest forms — so, Paul Celan, not Paul Antschel. Nationalities are only meant as geographical, and sometimes they are shorthand — David Bergelson is ‘Russian’ because he mainly lived there, even though he was born in the Ukraine, spent years in Germany, and wrote in Yiddish.

Abstract subjects Architecture Exile Gender and sexuality The Holocaust History of ideas Languages in contact Law and society Mythology National and cultural identity Opera Orientalism Postcolonial studies Sociolinguistics Surrealism Survey works Television Trauma Utopian thought Verse and metre Classics Euripides (c.480-406 BCE), Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c.446-386 BCE), Athenian playwright Plato (c.428-348 BCE), Athenian philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), Athenian philosopher Virgil (70-19 BCE), Roman poet The Middle Ages Anonymous literature of the Middle Ages Gonzalo de Berceo (c.1190-1264), Spanish poet Alfonso X El Sabio (1221-84), Castilian king Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), Italian poet François Villon (c.1431-63), French poet Gil Vicente (c.1465-1536), Portuguese playwright Born in the sixteenth century Maurice Scève (1500-64), French poet Teresa of Avila (1515-82), Spanish mystic Jan Kochanowski (1530-84), Polish poet Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), French essayist Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas (1544-90), French poet Torquato Tasso (1544-95), Italian poet Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Spanish novelist Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Italian natural philosopher William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Italian painter Martin Opitz von Boberfeld (1597-1639), German poet Born in the seventeenth century Pierre Corneille (1606-84), French playwright Richard Crashaw (c.1613-49), English poet Charles de Saint-Evremond (1614-1703), French critic Nicolas Fouquet (1615-80), French politician Furetière (1619-1688), French novelist Louis II de Bourbon (1621-86), French general Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French philosopher Madame de Lafayette (1634-93), French novelist Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), French playwright Jean Racine (1639-99), French playwright Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), French novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), English novelist Alexis Piron (1689-1773), French playwright Françoise de Graffigny (1695-1758), French novelist Born in the eighteenth century Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-84), French philosopher Laurence Sterne (1713-69), English novelist James Beattie (1735-1803), Scottish philosopher Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), French novelist Gottfried August Bürger (1748-94), German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer William Blake (1757-1827), English poet and artist J. C. F. Hölderlin (1770-1843), German poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), Italian/Greek poet and revolutionary ‘Stendhal’, Marie-Henri Beyle (1783-1842), French novelist Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857), German poet/novelist Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German poet Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French artist Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Italian poet Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist Born in the nineteenth century Victor Hugo (1802-85), French writer George Sand (1804-76), French novelist Eugène Sue (1804-57), French novelist Gérard de Nerval (1808-55), French poet Théophile Gautier (1811-72), French poet William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), English novelist Robert Browning (1812-89), English poet George Eliot (1819-80), English novelist Gottfried Keller (1819-90, Zurich), Swiss novelist Theodor Fontane (1819-98), German novelist/poet John Ruskin (1819-1900), English critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French poet Fedor Dostoevskii (1821-81), Russian novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-80), French novelist Hippolyte Taine (1828-93), French critic Lev Tolstoi (1828-1910), Russian novelist Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910), German novelist Jean-Pierre Brisset (1837-1919), French swimming instructor Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), Brazilian novelist Walter Pater (1839-94), English critic Émile Zola (1840-1902), French novelist Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), French poet Henry James (1843-1916), American novelist Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher Guy de Maupassant (1850-93), French novelist Paul Bourget (1852-1935), French critic Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), French poet Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian psychotherapist Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-84), Ukrainian/French diarist Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), Russian playwright and novelist Italo Svevo (1861-1928), Italian novelist William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet Léon Chestov (1866-1938), Ukrainian/French writer Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), Italian playwright Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist Paul Valéry (1871-1945), French poet

Born in the nineteenth century (continued) Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), French novelist Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), French writer Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet Victor Segalen (1878-1919), French poet Sholem Asch (1880-1957), Polish/American novelist James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920), Italian novelist Jean Paulhan (1884-1968), French editor David Bergelson (1884-1952), Russian novelist Der Nister (1884–1950), Russian poet/novelist D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist Joseph Opatoshu (1886-1954), Russian/American novelist Marc Chagall (1887-1985), French artist T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), English/American poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), Portuguese poet Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), Chilean poet Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), German philosopher Yvan Goll (1891-1950), German/French writer Rebecca West (1892-1983), English journalist Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), German philosopher Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973), Italian novelist Yannis Skarimbas (1893-1984), Greek novelist Viktor Shklovskii (1893-1984), Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Russian critic Peretz Markish (1895-1952), Russian poet Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Italian poet Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), French poet Georges Bataille (1897-1962), French critic Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), German playwright Benjamin Fondane (1898-1944), Romanian/French poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Spanish poet René Magritte (1898-1967), Belgian artist Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974), Guatemalan writer Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), Russian novelist Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian writer Born in the twentieth century Eduardo De Filippo (1900-84), Italian playwright Nathalie Sarraute (1900-99), French novelist Edgar Wind (1900-71), German/English art historian Cecília Meireles (1901-64), Brazilian poet Michel Leiris (1901-90), French writer Robert Bresson (1901-99), French director Adrian Stokes (1902-72), English critic Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-87), French novelist Georges Simenon (1903-89), Belgian novelist José Maria Hinojosa (1904-36), Spanish poet Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80), French philosopher Elias Canetti (1905-94), Bulgarian/German novelist Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), French writer Samuel Beckett (1906-89), Irish playwright Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95), French/Lithuanian philosopher Violette Leduc (1907-72), French novelist René Daumal (1908-44), French poet Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61), French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86), French philosopher Cesare Pavese (1908-50), Italian novelist Jean Genet (1910-86), French novelist/playwright Stratis Tsirkas (1911-80), Greek novelist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), French artist Edmond Jabès (1912-), French/Egyptian poet Elsa Morante (1912-85), Italian novelist Philip Guston (1913-80), American artist Julio Cortázar (1914-84), Argentinian writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96), French novelist Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Mexican poet Roland Barthes (1915-80), French critic Aldo Moro (1916-78), Italian politician Natalia Ginzburg (1916-91), Italian novelist Robert Antelme (1917-90), French Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919-87), Italian writer Iris Murdoch (1919-99), English novelist Paul Celan (1920-70), Romanian/German/French poet Clarice Lispector (1920-77), Brazilian novelist Georges Brassens (1921-81), French songwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-), French novelist Yves Bonnefoy (1923-), French poet Jorge Semprún (1923-2011), Spanish writer and politician Italo Calvino (1923-85), Italian novelist Barbara Hardy (1924-), English critic Roger Laporte (1925-2001), French critic Rosario Castellanos (1925-74), Mexican poet Gilles Deleuze (1925-95), French philosopher Nikos Kachtitsis (1926-70), Greek novelist Michel Foucault (1926-84), French philosopher Michel Butor (1926-), French novelist Francesca Sanvitale (1928-2011), Italian novelist Jean-Luc Godard (1930-), French/Swiss director Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), French philosopher Harold Pinter (1930-2008), English playwright Edoardo Sanguineti (1930-2010), Italian writer and theorist Maryse Condé (1930-), Guadeloupean novelist Toni Morrison (1931-), American novelist R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007), American/English artist Georges Perec (1936-82), French novelist Stephen Medcalf (1936-2007), English critic Ismail Kadare (1936-), Romanian novelist Silviano Santiago (1936-), Brazilian novelist Seamus Heaney (1939-), Irish poet Bessie Head (1937-86), Botswanan novelist Hélène Cixous (1937-), French novelist Giorgio Pressburger (1937-), Italian novelist Terence Cave (1938-), English critic Giuliana Morandini (1938-), Italian novelist Seamus Heaney (1939-), Irish poet Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-), French philosopher Annie Ernaux (1940-), French novelist Krzysztof Kieslowski (1941-96), Polish director Malcolm Bowie (1943-2007), English critic W. G. Sebald (1944-2001), German/English novelist Adam Zagajewski (1945-), Polish poet Gérard Macé (1946-), French writer Jean Echenoz (1947-), French novelist Caio Fernando Abreu (1948-96), Brazilian novelist Claire Denis (1948-), French director Pedro Almodóvar (1949-), Spanish director Noëlle Renaude (1949-), French playwright Christoph Ransmayr (1954-), Austrian writer Hervé Guibert (1955-91), French writer/photographer Antonio Muñoz Molina (1956-), Spanish novelist Ana Clavel (1961-), Mexican multimedia writer Marie NDiaye (1967-), French novelist