DANIEL DEFOE (1660-1731) Daniel Defoe was born in London as the son of a butcher. In his youth, he travelled all over Europe as a merchant, and he joined the army in 1688. Before he started writing his first novel at the age of nearly sixty, he had also worked as an economist, a journalist and a spy. Robinson Crusoe is based on a true story which Defoe had heard about. In 1704, a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk, had an argument with the captain of a ship and asked to be put ashore on an uninhabited island. He lived there alone until he was picked up by another English ship five years later.

MARK TWAIN (1835 - 1910) Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorn Clemens. The name Mark Twain originates from his time as a pilot on the Mississippi. Twain means 'two', and the second mark - mark twain - on the leadline showed the pilot that the river was two fathoms, or 3.6 metres, deep. He also worked as a printer, a gold digger and a journalist, and he stayed for some time in Europe. From 1867 he was a full time writer.

Susanna Tamaro Susanna Tamaro (Trieste, 12 December 1957) is an Italian novelist. She has also worked as a scientific documentarist and movie maker direction assistant.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut, the youngest member of a family of six brothers and four sisters. Her father was a famous preacher and her brothers and sisters shared an interest in religion. The America that Stowe grew up in was very different from country we know today. There were many divisions between North and the South, the most important being the issue of slavery. Many in the North accepted the slavery in the South as necessary for the national economy, although they knew how unfair and immoral this was.

Anna Gavalda (f. 1970) er uddannet lærer, men debuterede som forfatter i 1999 til stor litterær anerkendelse og har siden udgivet i alt otte bøger, som er oversat til mere end 30 sprog.

Biografie Uwe Timm wurde 1940 in Hamburg geboren. Nach einer Kürschnerlehre übernahm er 1958 das Pelzgeschäft seines Vaters. Fünf Jahre später machte er das Abitur und studierte dann Philosophie und Germanistik in München und Paris. Seit 1971 lebt er als freier Schriftsteller in München und Berlin. Er hat vier Kinder. Weitere Werke u.a.: Heißer Sommer (1974), sein erster Roman. Rennschwein Rudi Rüssel (1989), sein bekanntestes Kinder- und Jugendbuch, auch als Film. Am Beispiel meines Bruders (2003), auch als Easy Reader. Rot (2001), Roman über die jüngste deutsche Geschichte.