WILLIAM GOLDING
English author (1911-1993)
Biography:
William Gerald Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. He got his start as teacher in Salisbury. From the early years of his life he faced the atrocities of war. During the Second World War, he joint the army and participated in the Normandy invasion.
In 1954 he published Lord of the Flies, which becomes a real literary success all throughout the world. This was his first novel, and you can find in it his most recurrent topic: the conflict between humanity's innate barbarism and the civilizing influence of reason. Golding often uses historical backgrounds to describe man's nastyness and hypocresy. After the war, he couldn't believe in man's innocence any longer, not even in the innocence of a child. Thus his work revealed the darkness of man's heart.
In all his books, Golding explored human nature and the disasters of war. He published The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956) Free Fall (1959) and Darkness Visible (1978), among others. He also wrote short stories, plays and essays.
William Golding was awarded with the Booker Mc Connel Prize, the greatest British Literature Prize. Finally in 1983, he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for his whole offer to the Worldwide Literature.
William Golding on the Internet:
Site on Golding