Truman Capote

Truman Capote was an American writer, born in New Orleans on 30 September 1924 and died on 25 August 1984. He spent much of his childhood in the rural American South, in the care of relatives, and those years shaped his early fiction. He became known in his twenties for a first novel of Southern gothic strangeness, and then for short stories and novellas marked by precise, musical prose.

His best-known work includes a lively novella about a young woman in wartime New York and a long account of a real murder in Kansas, which he called a nonfiction novel. That book helped open the way for literary true crime and new forms of reportage. Capote was also a famous figure in society and on television, admired for his wit and his voice. His later years were troubled, and a last novel remained unfinished. He matters for his style, his range, and his part in blending fiction with fact.