William Golding
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William Golding
William Gerald Golding was born in the village of Saint Columba Minor at Cornwall on September 19, 1911. Golding was an important English novelist, an essayist and poet, and he won the 1983 Nobel Prize for literature. "Golding's often allegorical fiction makes broad use of allusions to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism. Although no distinct thread unites his novels and his technique varies, Golding deals principally with evil and emerges with what has been characterized as a kind of dark optimism."(Carner, Judy) He has been able to reveal the dark places of the human heart.
"Twenty-five years ago I accepted the label 'pessimist' thoughtlessly without realizing that it was going to be tied to my tail, as it were, in something the way that, to take an example from another art, Rachmaninoff's famous Prelude in C sharp minor was tied to him. No audience would allow him off the concert platform until he played it. Similarly critics have dug into my books until they could come up with something that looked hopeless. I can't think why. I don't feel hopeless myself...