J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger was an American writer, born in Manhattan on 1 January 1919 and died on 27 January 2010. He began publishing short stories in magazines in the 1940s, and many of his best-known pieces appeared in The New Yorker. His novel The Catcher in the Rye made him famous, and its restless teenage narrator has stayed in the minds of readers ever since. He also wrote a group of linked stories about the Glass family, a clever and troubled New York household, which explore family, grief and spiritual searching.

Salinger grew uneasy with fame and withdrew from public life, living privately in New Hampshire for most of his later years. He published little after the mid-1960s. His writing matters for its sharp ear for speech, its humour and tenderness, and its sympathy for sensitive young people trying to find honesty in a world that seems false.