List of novelists by nationality
Well-known authors of novels, listed by country:
See also the list of children's literature authors
- Australia
- Jessica Anderson
- Thea Astley
- Murray Bail
- Carmel Bird
- Rolf Boldrewood
- Lily Brett, author of Just Like That (1994)
- Peter Carey
- Marcus Clarke
- James Clavell, screenwriter, director (of the original The Fly among others), author of Shogun
- Greg Egan, science fiction
- Richard Flanagan
- David Foster
- Miles Franklin
- Joseph Furphy
- Helen Garner
- Peter Goldsworthy
- Kerry Greenwood
- Kate Grenville
- Xavier Herbert
- Dorothy Hewett
- George Johnston
- Elizabeth Jolley
- Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark (1985), on which the film Schindler's List was based, Confederates (1979)
- Frank Moorhouse
- Gerald Murnane
- Henry Handel Richardson
- Christina Stead, author of The Man Who Loved Children (1940)
- Patrick White, Nobel Prize for Literature (1973), noted for his examinations of his native land
- Tim Winton
- Amy Witting
- Austria (see also German literature)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Ivo Andric, (1892-1975)
- Brazil
- Paulo Coelho, (1947- )
- Canada (see also: List of Canadian writers
- Margaret Atwood, (1939- ), author of The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
- Pierre Berton, (1920- )
- Douglas Coupland,
- Robertson Davies, (1913-1995), author of Fifth Business
- C. J. Everon (See also France)
- Timothy Findley (1930-2002) (See also France)
- Mavis Gallant, (1922- ) (See also France)
- Arthur Hailey, (1920- ), indefatigable researcher, author of Hotel (1965), Airport (1968)
- Jack Hodgins
- Nancy Huston, (1953- ) (See also France)
- Robert N.Kucey, (1940- )
- Hugh MacLennan,
- Margaret Laurence,
- Stephen Leacock
- Malcolm Lowry, (1909-1957), author of Under the Volcano (1947)
- Alistair MacLeod, (1936- )
- Yann Martel, author of "Life of Pi", 2002 Booker Prize
- Rohinton Mistry, (1952- )
- Lucy Maude Montgomery, (1874-1942)
- Tara Moss (1973- ), author of Fetish
- Farley Mowat
- Alice Munro, (1931- )
- Michael Ondaatje, (1943- ), author of The English Patient (1993)
- Mordecai Richler, (1931-2001), author of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959)
- David Adams Richards, (1950- )
- Gabrielle Roy, (1909-1983)
- Carol Shields, (1935- )
- Jane Urquhart, (1949- )
- Catalan
- Raimon Llull, (1235-1315), author of Libre de meravelles
- Ramon Muntaner, (circa 1270-1336), author of Cronica
- Joanot Martorell, (1413-1468), author of Tirant lo Blanch
- Narcís Oller, (1846-1930), author of La febre d'or
- Mercè Rodoreda, (1909-1983), author of La plaça del diamant
- China
- Lao She, (1899-1966), author of "Si Shi Tong Tang"
- Zhang Ailing, (1920-1995), female romantic story writer
- Qian Zhongshu, (1910-1998), author of "Wei Cheng"
- Lu Xun, (1881-1936), author of "The True Story of Ah Q"
- Mao Dun, (1896-1981), author of "Zi Ye"
- Colombia
- Gabriel García Márquez, (1928- ), author of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Nobel Prize for Literature (1982), journalist, publisher, avatar of magical realism
- José Eustasio Rivera, (1888-1928), author of La vorágine
- Cosmopolitan
- Romain Gary, Russian-born French writer
- Franz Kafka, (1883-1924) lived in Prague during Austria-Hungary and Czechoslovakia; German language writer; see also German literature
- Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)
- Milan Kundera, (1929- ) born in Czechoslovakia, but moved to France. Multi-language writer.
- Salman Rushdie, (1947- ) born in India, but moved abroad later. English language writer, placed under fatwah (death sentence) by Muslim clerics
- Czech Republic
- Karel Capek, (1890-1938) inventor of the word robot, moralist, ironist, Czech patriot
- Jaroslav Hasek, (1883-1923), author of The Good Soldier Schweik
- Vaclav Havel, President of Czech Republic (1993-2003) and famous playwriter.
- Bohumil Hrabal, (1914-1997), author of Closely Watched Trains, died trying to feed pigeons.
- Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986), (Nobel Prize For Literature) (1982)
- Denmark
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
- Isak Dinesen, (1885-1962) (real name: Karen Blixen), author of Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Out of Africa (1937)
- Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1873-1950)
- Peter Kjaerulff
- Egypt
- Naguib Mahfouz, (1911- ) Nobel Prize for Literature (1988), famous for the Cairo Trilogy about life in the sprawling inner city.
- England
- Peter Ackroyd
- Kingsley Amis, novelist and poet, young author of Lucky Jim and old author of The Old Devils.
- Martin Amis, son of Kingsley, author of Dead Babies, Money, and The Information
- Jeffrey Archer
- Jane Austen
- Beryl Bainbridge
- J. G. Ballard, author of Crash, Empire of the Sun
- Julian Barnes, author of England, England
- Arnold Bennett
- Anthony Berkeley, mystery writer (The Poisoned Chocolates Case)
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Simon Brett (whodunnits)
- Anne Brontë
- Charlotte Brontë
- Emily Brontë
- Anita Brookner
- Anthony Buckeridge
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the annual bad writing contest is named after him.
- John Bunyan
- Anthony Burgess, composer, essayist, author of A Clockwork Orange
- Samuel Butler
- G. K. Chesterton, mystery writer and Christian apologist
- Agatha Christie
- Jonathan Coe
- Ivy Compton-Burnett, author of novels about dysfunctional families
- Joseph Conrad, Polish-born mariner, author of The Heart of Darkness
- Amanda Craig, author of A Vicious Circle and In a Dark Wood
- Daniel Defoe, journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders
- Charles Dickens, master of the novel, wrote for serial publication
- Margaret Drabble
- Daphne Du Maurier
- Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet
- George Eliot
- Ben Elton
- Henry Fielding
- Ford Madox Ford, author of The Good Soldier (1914), promoter of many other writers.
- E. M. Forster
- Stephen Fry
- Neil Gaiman
- Alex Garland, author of The Beach
- Elizabeth Gaskell
- Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort Farm, found something nasty in Mary Webb's woodshed.
- William G. Golding, The Lord of the Flies
- Robert Graves, The White Goddess
- Graham Greene
- H. Rider Haggard, adventure novels set in exotic locations, such as King Solomon's Mines, She
- Thomas Hardy
- Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, Five Quarters of the Orange
- Josephine Hart, author of Damage
- Carole Hayman
- Stewart Home
- Nick Hornby, author of About a Boy (1998)
- William Horwood
- Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World
- Hammond Innes
- Christopher Isherwood
- Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day
- P.D. James, author of crime fiction but also the dystopian novel The Children of Men (1992)
- Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat
- Rudyard Kipling, author of Kim (1904)
- Arthur Koestler
- D. H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley's Lover
- C. S. Lewis, Christian, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote a book called Surprised by Joy, years of English bachelorhood later, married an American fan named Joy
- David Lodge, author of Thinks ... (2001)
- Hilary Mantel
- A. E. W. Mason, author of The Four Feathers
- William Somerset Maugham, author of Liza of Lambeth and The Razor's Edge and creator of Sadie Thompson in Rain
- Ian McEwan
- George Meredith
- Nancy Mitford
- Iris Murdoch, author of A Severed Head
- Patrick O'Brian, author of the Aubrey/Maturin naval historical novels (Master and Commander is the first in the series)
- George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, journalist, volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, author of Animal Farm (1945), 1984 (1949)
- Ouida, (1839-1908)
- Thomas Love Peacock
- Terry Pratchett
- J. B. Priestley
- Barbara Pym
- Samuel Richardson, printer, contender for the title of "first English novelist", author of Pamela (1740)
- Sax Rohmer, creator of Dr. Fu Manchu, "the yellow peril incarnate in one man".
- Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery writer (creator of Lord Peter Wimsey), playwright, translator of Dante
- Will Self
- Tom Sharpe, author of Wilt
- C. P. Snow
- Muriel Spark
- Graham Swift won the Booker Prize in 1996 for Last Orders; also known for an earlier novel Waterland (1984).
- William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair
- J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings
- Anthony Trollope, prolific documentor of life in Victorian England
- Evelyn Waugh, comic novelist (Scoop), tragic novelist (Brideshead Revisited), sometimes in the same book.
- Mary Webb, tales of rural life
- Fay Weldon
- H. G. Wells, author and essayist, early writer of science fiction, author of The War of the Worlds
- Mary Wesley, author of The Camomile Lawn
- T. H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King
- Angus Wilson
- P. G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and Wooster
- Virginia Woolf, feminist, modernist
- Helen Zahavi, author of Dirty Weekend (1991), a modern-day picaresque novel
- Finland
- Tove Jansson, (1914-2001) she wrote in Swedish
- Aino Kallas, (1878-1956), female
- Aleksis Kivi, (1834-1872)
- Väinö Linna, (1920-1992)
- Frans Emil Sillanpää, (1888-1964) (Nobel Prize for Literature) (1939)
- Mika Waltari, (1908-1979)
- France
- Honore de Balzac, author of La Comedie Humaine, a series of novels presenting a full picture of France in the early 19th century
- Pierre Boulle, author of The Bridge on the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes.
- Albert Camus
- Louis Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan or Mort á Credit.
- Gilbert Cesbron
- Emilie du Chatelet
- Colette, best known for "Gigi" and "Cheri"
- Alphonse Daudet
- Régine Deforges
- Denis Diderot
- Alexandre Dumas, perhaps more movies have been made from his novels than any other; The Count of Monte Cristo has been filmed on an average of once every 18 months since films were first made.
- C. J. Everon (See also Canada)
- Timothy Findley (See also Canada)
- Mavis Gallant (See also Canada)
- Judith Godrèche, actress/author
- Nancy Huston (See also Canada)
- Andre Gide
- Michel Houellebecq, Impact award winner
- Joris-Karl Huysmans, (1848-1907), novelist of the perverse
- Gustave Flaubert
- Victor Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables
- Alfred Jarry, satirist, inventor of Pataphysics
- Choderlos de Laclos
- Andre Malraux
- Alma Marceau
- Georges Perec
- Abbe Prevost
- Marcel Proust
- Francois Rabelais
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Marquis de Sade, Mr. Eponym
- Georges Sand
- Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist
- Gertrude Stein (See also: United States)
- Stendhal, author of The Red and the Black, considered by some to be the first modern novel
- Jules Verne, writer of techno-thrillers, and founding father of science fiction.
- Boris Vian
- Voltaire, satirist
- Emile Zola, realist
- Germany (see also German literature)
- Heinrich Böll, (1917-1985)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832), polymath.
- Günter Grass, (1927- )
- Hermann Hesse, (1877-1962), author of The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf
- Siegfried Lenz, (1926- )
- Thomas Mann, (1875-1955)
- Erich Maria Remarque, (1898-1970), author of Im Westen nichts Neues, or All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
- Patrick Süskind (1949- ), author of Perfume
- Hungary
- Gyorgy Dalos, (1943- )
- India
- Salman Rushdie, (1947- ), of the fatwa fame.
- R K Narayan, (1906-2001)
- Ireland
- Samuel Beckett, (1906-1989)
- Brendan Behan, (1923-1964)
- Thomas Flanagan, (1923-2002)
- James Joyce, (1882-1941), author of Ulysses, Finnegans Wake
- Brian O'Nolan, (1911-1966) better known as Flann O'Brien, Myles na Gcopaleen, Cruiskeen Lawn...
- Laurence Sterne, (1713-1768) played with text and self-referential narrative two centuries before Postmodernism was invented.
- Jonathan Swift, (1667-1745) author of biting satires. Gulliver's Travels was Bowdlerised into a children's book.
- Oscar Wilde, (1854-1900), also a playwright, imprisoned for homosexual acts
- Israel
- Amos Oz, author of Black Box, My Michael
- A. B. Yehoshua, author of Mr. Mani
- Italy
- Riccardo Bacchelli
- Alessandro Baricco
- Stefano Benni, journalist, poet, novelist, Terra (1985) is most popular work in English
- Alberto Bevilacqua
- Giovanni Boccaccio
- Vitaliano Brancati
- Gesualdo Bufalino
- Aldo Busi
- Dino Buzzati
- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
- Luigi Capuana
- Andrea Camilleri
- Carlo Cassola
- Carlo Collodi
- Gabriele D'Annunzio, revolutionary
- Massimo D'Azeglio
- Grazia Deledda
- Giuseppe Dessi
- Umberto Eco
- Carlo Emilio Gadda
- Natalia Ginzburg
- Primo Levi, resistance fighter, chemist and novelist
- Emilio Lussu
- Alessandro Manzoni
- Dacia Maraini
- Elsa Morante
- Alberto Moravia
- Cesare Pavese
- Luigi Pirandello, playwright, Six Characters in Search of an Author
- Vasco Pratolini
- Salvatore Satta
- Alberto Savinio
- Leonardo Sciascia
- Ignazio Silone
- Mario Soldati
- Italo Svevo
- Susanna Tamaro
- Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
- Giovanni Verga
- Elio Vittorini
- Kenya
- Ngugi wa Thiongo, (1938- )
- Nigeria
- Chinua Achebe, (1930- ) Things Fall Apart, stories about the dissolution of traditional African society.
- Peru
- Mario Vargas Llosa, (1936- ), ran for president, author of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
- Poland
- Witold Gombrowicz, (1904-1969)
- Stanislaw Lem, (1921- )
- Eliza Orzeszkowa, (1841-1910)
- Boleslaw Prus, (1847-1912)
- Wladyslaw Reymont, (1867-1925) Nobel Prize for Literature 1924, author of national epic The Peasants
- Henryk Sienkiewicz, (1846-1916), Nobel Prize for Literature 1905, Quo Vadis
- Stefan Zeromski, (1864-1925)
- Russia
- Andrey Bely, (1880-1934)
- Mikhail Bulgakov, (1891-1940, author of The Master and Margarita
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, (1821-1881), author of The Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed
- Nikolai Gogol, (1809-1852), author of Dead Souls
- Ivan Goncharov, (1812-1891), Oblomov, a tale of "everyman"
- Mikhail Lermontov, (1814-1841)
- Nikolai Leskov, (1831-1895)
- Vladimir Nabokov, (1899-1977) early novels in Russian, later, including Lolita, in English.
- Boris Pasternak, (1890-1960), refused the Nobel Prize for Literature, Doctor Zhivago
- Aleksandr Pushkin, (1799-1837)
- Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, (1826-1889)
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (1918- ), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, also historian
- Aleksey K. Tolstoy, (1817-1875)
- Aleksey N. Tolstoy, (1883-1945)
- Leo Tolstoy, (1828-1910) of whose greatest book it was said, "Loved the war, hated the peace".
- Scotland
- Iain Banks aka Iain M. Banks, (1954- ) writes mainstream novels under the first name, science-fiction novels under the second.
- J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan among others.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Great Detective, discoverer of the Lost World, believer in fairies.
- James Kelman
- Ken MacLeod, (1954- ), science fiction
- Ian Rankin
- Sir Walter Scott, (1771-1832), innovator of the historical novel
- Robert Louis Stevenson, (1850-1894), author of Treasure Island
- Mary Stewart, (1916- )
- Nigel Tranter, (1909-2000), Scottish historical novels.
- Irvine Welsh, (1961- )
- Serbia
- Milorad Pavic, (1929- )
- Spain
- Leopoldo Alas, author of 'La Regenta'
- Miguel de Cervantes: El Quijote, or Don Quixote
- Pérez Galdós
- Juan Goytisolo: El sitio de los sitios
- Juan Marsé: La Muchacha de las bragas de oro
- Eduardo Mendoza: La ciudad de los prodigios, Sin Noticias de Gurp, El Misterio de la cripta embrujada
- Miguel de Unamuno: Niebla, San Manuel Bueno Martir
- United States
- Kathy Acker
- Henry Adams
- Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, Little Men
- Nelson Algren, The Man With the Golden Arm.
- Sherwood Anderson
- Maya Angelou, known mostly for her biography, I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, and for her poetry.
- Paul Auster, postmodernist mystery writer extrordinaire, author of the City of Glass trilogy, Leviathan, Timbuktu
- Richard Bach
- James Baldwin, writer known for exploring race and sexuality, author of Another Country
- Russell Banks, (1940- ), author of The Sweet Hereafter
- John Franklin Bardin
- Charles Baxter
- Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
- T. C. Boyle, author of The Road to Wellville and A Friend of the Earth (2000)
- Ray Bradbury, author of The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Richard Brautigan
- Frederick Buechner
- Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
- Charles Bukowski, poet who also wrote novels about down-and-out life, including Post Office, Factotum, and Pulp.
- William S. Burroughs
- James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce
- Erskin Caldwell, God's Little Acre
- Truman Capote
- Orson Scott Card
- Willa Cather, modernist, author of The Professor's House, My Antonia
- Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wonder Boys
- Raymond Chandler
- Kate Chopin
- Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
- James Fenimore Cooper, Leatherstocking Tales
- Charles Cotton
- Douglas Coupland
- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
- Don DeLillo
- Stephen Dobyns
- Theodore Dreiser, realist, author of Sister Carrie
- John Dos Passos
- Brett Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Juneteenth
- Louise Erdrich
- Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides
- William Faulkner, Southern Modernist, author of A Light in August
- Jessie Fauset, Harlem Renaissance writer; author of Plum Bun
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby
- Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections
- Ben K. Green
- John Grisham, legal thrillers
- Alex Haley, Roots
- Dashiell Hammett
- Barry Hannah
- Kent Haruf, author of The Tie That Binds and Plainsong
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables
- Robert Heinlein
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Something Happened
- Ernest Hemingway, author of The Sun Also Rises
- Carl Hiaasen, author of environmental thrillers such as Sick Puppy
- Langston Hughes, (1902-1967), Simple Comes to Harlem
- Zora Neale Hurston, anthropologist and novelist, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God
- John Irving
- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle
- Henry James, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors
- James Jones
- Jan Karon, (1937- )
- Jack Kerouac, beatnik, author of On the Road (1952).
- Barbara Kingsolver author of The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, amongst others
- Ursula K. Le Guin, essayist, poet, novelist for children and adults
- Jerzy Kosinski, (1933-1991), of Jewish origins - his works are in English
- Anne Lamott
- Nella Larsen, Harlem Renaissance writer; author of Quicksand and Passing.
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- Murray Leinster
- Ira Levin
- Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Main Street
- Jack London, The Sea Wolf
- Stephen King horror novelist
- Robert Ludlum
- Carson McCullers
- John D. MacDonald, detective fiction
- Larry McMurtry
- Norman Mailer, journalist, author of The Naked and the Dead (1948).
- Bernard Malamud
- Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the City
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
- James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific
- Henry Miller, author of frequently banned Tropic of Cancer
- Steven Millhauser, (1943- )
- Christopher Moore, author of "Lamb" and others.
- Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize for Literature, Beloved
- Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine
- Vladimir Nabokov, lepidopterist, Lolita
- Frank Norris, McTeague
- Joyce Carol Oates
- Flannery O'Connor
- Chuck Palahniuk (1962- ), author of Fight Club and Choke
- Walker Percy
- Thomas Pynchon, a pseudonym. A famous postmodernist, author of The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and V. among other works.
- Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged
- Harold Robbins
- Tom Robbins
- Philip Roth, author of Portnoy´s Complaint and The Human Stain
- J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
- Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and On the Waterfront
- Upton Sinclair, socialist, author of The Jungle (1906)
- Terry Southern, author of The Magic Christian
- Mickey Spillane, author of I, the Jury (1947), the first of the Mike Hammer books
- Danielle Steel
- Gertrude Stein, Modernist innovator in prose and poetry, author of Three Lives, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (See also France)
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men
- Neal Stephenson science fiction writer, author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon
- Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls, the best selling novel of 1966.
- Amy Tan
- Studs Terkel
- Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo journalist".
- John Kennedy Toole
- Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent
- Harry Turtledove
- Mark Twain, author of Huckleberry Finn
- John Updike, author of Rabit Run and sequels.
- Kurt Vonnegut, author of Cat's Cradle
- Alice Walker
- David Foster Wallace
- E. B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, co-author of The Elements of Style.
- Edith Wharton
- Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of Vanities
- Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
- English Language
- Ken Follett
- Richard Hughes, (1900-1976), A High Wind in Jamaica
- Jack Jones, (1884-1970)
- Richard Llewellyn, (1907-1983), How Green Was My Valley
- Jean Rhys
- Howard Spring, (1889-1965)
- Welsh Language
- Daniel Owen, (1836-1895)
- Kate Roberts, (1891-1985)
- Yiddish
- Sholom Aleichem, (1859-1916) (real name: Solomon Rabinovitz), Fiddler on the Roof was based on his stories.
- Sholom Asch, (1880-1957)
- Ber Honigman, (1923- )
- Mendele Moykher-Sforim, (1836?-1917), pseud. for Sholem Yankev Abramovitch
- Yitzok Lebesh Peretz, (1852-1915)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer, (1904-1991)