Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Kafka, Franz fränts käfˈkä [key], 1883–1924, German-language novelist, b. Prague. Along with Joyce, Kafka is perhaps the most influential of 20th-century writers. From a middle-class Jewish fami...

(Encyclopedia) Simon, Claude Eugène Henri, 1913–2005, French novelist. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and studied at Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. He fought in World War II both as a soldier and later i...

(Encyclopedia) vorticism vôrˈtĭsĭzəm [key], short-lived 20th-century art movement related to futurism. Its members sought to simplify forms into machinelike angularity. Its principal exponent was a French sculp...

(Encyclopedia) Antunes, António Lobo, 1942–, Portuguese novelist. Trained as a physician, he was a field hospital doctor in Angola in the 1960s and later worked in a children's cancer hospital; both experiences s...

(Encyclopedia) Berio, Luciano lo͞ochäˈnō bĕrˈyō [key], 1925–2003, Italian composer, b. Oneglia. After studying at the Milan Conservatory and working as a coach and conductor in Italian opera houses, Berio w...

(Encyclopedia) Döblin, Alfred älˈfrĕt döblĭnˈ [key], 1878–1957, German novelist and physician. His experiences as a psychiatrist in the workers' district of Berlin served as the basis for his experimental n...

(Encyclopedia) citrus fruits, widely used edible fruits of plants belonging to Citrus and related genera of the family Rutaceae (orange family). Included are the tangerine, citrange, tangelo, orange, pomelo, grapefr...

(Encyclopedia) monologue, an extended speech by one person only. Strindberg's one-act play The Stronger, spoken entirely by one person, is an extreme example of monologue. Soliloquy is synonymous, but usually refers...

(Encyclopedia) Broch, Hermann hĕrˈmän brôkh [key], 1886–1951, Austrian novelist. Broch is one of the masters of European modernism. Influenced by Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, and the Vien...

(Encyclopedia) Edel, Leon (Joseph Leon Edel) ĕdˈəl, āˈdəl [key], 1907–97, American literary scholar and biographer, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. A professor at New York Univ. (1953–72) and the Univ. of Hawaii (1972�...