Deaths in 2011

DECEMBER

18th - Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician Václav Havel died aged 75. He was the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003).

14th – George Whitman, the American born proprietor of the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, died aged 98, after suffering a stroke two months ago.

13th – American author Russell Hoban died aged 86. He wrote books for both adults and children; his best known book for adults is the science fiction novel Riddley Walker(1980) which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel in 1982.

4th - Finnish crime fiction writer Matti Yrjänä Joensuu died aged 63. He was the recipient of the State's Literature Prize and he received the Martin Beck Award in 1987.

3rd – French Canadian novelist Louky Bersianik died aged 81. The 1986 film Firewords / Les terribles vivantes was based on her 1976 novel L'Euguélionne: roman triptyque / The Euguélionne: a triptych novel.

2nd – English poet, playwright and actor Christopher Logue died aged 85. He won the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award for Cold Calls. His last major work was an ongoing project to render Homer's Iliad into a modernist idiom; the volume, Homer: War Music, was shortlisted for the 2002 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

1st – German literary critic, novelist and essayist Christa Wolf died aged 82. Kassandra / Cassandra (1983) is perhaps Wolf's most important book, re-interpreting the battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society.

NOVEMBER

25th – Russian novelist and journalist Leonid Borodin (Леони́д Бороди́н) died aged 73. The publication in English translation of The Story of a Strange Time led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1982 on charges of 'anti-Soviet propaganda', he was released after four years. He was awarded several literary prizes, including the 2002 Solzhenitsyn Prize.

24th – English author Helen Forrester died aged 92. She was known for her memoirs about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression such as Twopence to Cross the Mersey (1974), as well as several works of fiction, including A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (2003).

21st – American-born Irish writer Anne McCaffrey died aged 85; the cause of death was a stroke. She is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. Over the course of her 46 year career she won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award and in 2005 the Science Fiction Writers of America named her the 22nd Grand Master and she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2006.

20th – English dramatist and screen writer Shelagh Delaney died aged 72, the cause of death was heart failure and breast cancer. She was best known for her debut work, A Taste of Honey (1953).

19th – British playwright and screen-writer Michael Hastings died aged 73. His best known work is his 1984 play about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Tom and Viv, which became a motion picture released in 1994.

American poet Ruth Stone died aged 96. She wrote thirteen books of poetry and received many awards and honors, including the 2002 National Book Award for her collection In the Next Galaxy. In July 2007, she was named poet laureate of Vermont.

18th – Mexican author Daniel Sada died aged 58; the cause of death was kidney disease. In 2008 he won the prestigious Herralde Prize for his novel Almost Never. In 2011 he was awarded Mexico's prestigious National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the Literature category; he died just hours after being presented the prize.

17th – English poet Peter Reading died aged 65. His 1997 collection Work in Regress was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

16th – Chechen poet and academic Ruslan Akhtakhanov (Руслан Ахтаханов) was shot and killed by an unknown assailant; he was 58.

15th – British actress, singer and mystery novelist Dulcie Gray died aged 95; the cause of death was bronchial pneumonia. She wrote two dozen murder mysteries including seventeen detective stories featuring the character Inspector Cardiff.

5th – American historian of comic books and author of horror novels Les Daniels died aged 68; the cause of death was a heart attack. He was the author of five novels featuring the vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva, a cynical, amoral and misanthropic Spanish nobleman.

OCTOBER

27th - American professor of Italian literature, poet, and translator Allen Mandelbaum died aged 85. In 2000, for the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor of the City of Florence, in honor of his translation of The Divine Comedy.

23rd - Bestselling American children's writer Florence Parry Heide died aged 92. Her best known works are a series of story books about the curious adventures of a boy named Treehorn, which includes the titles The Shrinking of Treehorn (1971), Treehorn's Treasure (1981) and Treehorn’s Wish (1986), all of which Edward Gorey illustrated.

17th – Writer and poet Piri Thomas died aged 83; the cause of death was pneumonia. He is best known for his autobiography Down These Mean Streets which describes his struggle for survival as a Puerto Rican/Cuban born and raised in the barrios of New York.

7th – American author Mildred Savage died aged 92. She achieved success with her first novel Parrish (1958) which tells the story of a man who goes to work on a Connecticut tobacco farm.

SEPTEMBER

29th – Dutch writer Hella Haasse died aged 93. She is internationally known for Heren van de Thee / The Tea Lords a historical novel set in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th and 20th century.

27th – Australian author of fantasy fiction Sara Douglass died aged 54; the cause of death was ovarian cancer. Her works include The Axis Trilogy and The Wayfarer Redemption.

Israeli Polish-language Jewish author Ida Fink (אידה פינק) died aged 89. She wrote primarily on Holocaust themes; her stories revolve around the terrible choices that the Jews had to make during the Nazi era and the hardships of Holocaust survivors after the war. She was awarded the Israel Prize for Literature in 2008.

22nd – Kenyan writer Margaret Ogola died aged 53. She wrote the novel The River and the Source which won the 1995 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Africa.

9th – Egyptian novelist Khairy Shalaby (خيري شلبي) died aged 73. His novel The Lodging House won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2003.

6th – American inventor of the ebook and founder of Project Gutenberg Michael S. Hart died aged 64; the cause of death was a heart attack.

4th – American writer, poet and novelist Hugh Fox died aged 79. He was one of the founders, along with Ralph Ellison, Anaïs Nin, Paul Bowles and Buckminster Fuller, of the Pushcart Prize for literature.

AUGUST

25th – English author of children’s fiction Ruth Thomas died aged 84. She is best known for her début novel The Runaways which won the 1988 Guardian Children's Fiction Award.

17th – French editor, essayist, novelist and historian Michel Mohrt died aged 97. He received the 1962 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for his novel La Prison maritime / Sea Prison. He was elected to the Académie française on 18 April 1985.

15th – British author of writers’ guides and romance novels Michael Legat died aged 88. He was an associate vice-president of the Romantic Novelists' Association.

3rd – Bestselling Czech novelist Simona Monyová was found dead in her home aged 44. She received several stab wounds, which her husband was suspected of inflicting.

American author of books for young adults William Sleator died aged 66. One of his best known novels is Interstellar Pig (1984) which features a youth who is drawn into an all-too-real role-playing game in which the losers and their civilizations are destroyed.

2nd - American novelist Leslie Esdaile Banks died aged 51, the cause of death was adrenal cancer. She is best known for writing The Vampire Huntress Legend Series under the pseudonym LA Banks.

1st – English novelist Stan Barstow died aged 83. He was best known for his 1960 novel A Kind of Loving which has been adapted into a film, a television series, a radio play and a stage play.

JULY

31st – Cuban-born Mexican novelist Eliseo Alberto died aged 59; the cause of death was complications following a kidney transplant. He was awarded the 1998 Premio Alfaguara de Novela literary prize for his novel Caracol Beach, which follows a war veteran living in a fictitious town in Florida who is haunted by visions of a Bengal tiger with wings.

27th – Hungarian-born French novelist Ágota Kristóf died aged 75. She received the European prize for French literature for Le Grand Cahier / The Notebook (1986).

26th – Japanese science fiction writer Sakyo Komatsu died aged 80. In the West he is best known for the novels Japan Sinks (1973) and Sayonara Jupiter (1982).

24th – German soldier, peace activist and writer Henry Metelmann died aged 88. He was best known for his memoir about his experiences growing up in Nazi Germany and in World War II entitled Through Hell for Hitler.

20th – American writer Blaize Clement died aged 78. She was best-known for her witty, light-hearted series of "Dixie Hemingway" mystery novels which centre round the life of a former policewoman turned pet-sitter.

3rd - Scottish novelist Iain Blair died after a four-year battle with diabetes, he was 69 years old. Blair is best remembered for writing romance novels using the pen name Emma Blair.

British novelist, poet and short story writer Francis King died aged 88. He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize.

JUNE

21st - Canadian novelist and poet Robert Kroetsch died aged 83. He wrote a series of novels based in Alberta. His novel The Studhorse Man(1969) won the Governor General's Literary Award.

19th - Australian writer T.A.G. Hungerford died aged 96. He is best remembered for his World War II novel The Ridge and the River and his short stories that chronicle growing up in South Perth during the Great Depression.

10th - British soldier and travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor died aged 96. Two of his most celebrated books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water(1986), tell the story of his year-long walk across Europe from Rotterdam to Istanbul in 1934, when he was 18 and the Continent was on the verge of cataclysmic change.

7th - Spanish writer and politician Jorge Semprún died aged 87. He lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. Most of his books are fictionalised accounts of his deportation to Buchenwald.

4th - American writer Lillian Jackson Braun died aged 97. She was best known for her light-hearted series of The Cat Who... mystery novels. The series centres around the life of former newspaper reporter, James Qwilleran, and his two Siamese cats, KoKo and Yum Yum, in the fictitious small town of Pickax located in Moose County "400 miles north of everywhere."

2nd - Irish-born British writer Josephine Hart died aged 69; the cause of death was ovarian cancer. Her best known work is the novel Damage. The book, which she finished in six weeks, concerns a middle-aged government minister who develops an erotic obsession with his son's girlfriend. It was made into a film in 1992 starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche.

Canadian American author of science fiction and fantasy Joel Rosenberg died aged 57; the cause of death was a sudden respiratory depression which caused a heart attack, brain damage and major organ failures. He was best known for his long-running Guardians of the Flame series.

MAY

31st - Dutch-German author Hans Keilson died aged 101. He fled to the Netherlands during Nazi rule in Germany in 1936. His parents were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. Critic Francine Prose called Keilson a 'genius' and one of the world’s best writers. She described his books The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key as masterpieces.

25th - British born surrealist painter and novelist Leonora Carrington died aged 94; the cause of death was complications of pneumonia. She spent most of her life in Mexico and wrote short stories and novels in the same Surrealist vein as her artwork.

Greek poet, critic and translator Yannis Varveris (Γιάννης Βαρβέρης)died aged 56; the cause of death was a cardiac arrest. He belonged to the Genia tou 70, which refers to Greek authors who began publishing their work during the 1970s. He was awarded the Cavafy prize in 2001 for his poetry collection Στα ξένα / Abroad.

23rd - Honduran poet Roberto Sosa died aged 81; the cause of death was a heart attack. Los Pobres (1969) won the Adonais Prize in Spain. Un Mundo Para Todos Dividido (1971) won the Casa de las Americas Prize in Cuba. The Common Grief, and The Return of the River have all been translated into English.

19th - Nebraskan poet William Kloefkorn died aged 78. He was the author of twelve collections of poetry. In 1982, Kloefkorn was appointed State Poet of Nebraska.

18th - American author and editor Dick Wimmer died aged 74; the cause of death was heart complications. His best known work is The Irish Wine Trilogy.

14th - Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig died aged 81. She was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1993. She was one of Sweden's most celebrated authors, and wrote prose fiction and non-fiction, as well as prose poetry.

10th - Irish writer, dramatist and poet Patrick Galvin died aged 83. He adapted his memoir Song for a Raggy Boy into a film, starring Aidan Quinn as a socialist returning to Ireland after the Spanish Civil War and taking up a post as a teacher in an Reformatory.

APRIL

30th - Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato died aged 99; the cause of death was pneumonia. His novels include The Tunnel/El Túnel (1948), On Heros and Tombs/Sobre héroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddón el exterminador (1974). His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Legion of Honour (France) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain).

29th - American writer, academic and feminist Joanna Russ died aged 74 following a series of strokes. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. It uses the device of parallel worlds to consider the ways that different societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact and respond to sexism.

25th - Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas died aged 93. He died as a result of a stroke he suffered earlier in February, which he could not recover from. He was awarded the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1992. He also received the Octavio Paz prize of Mexico, and the José Hernández prize of Argentina. He was awarded the Cervantes Prize in 2003.

21st - American romance novelist Beverly Barton died aged 64; the cause of death was heart failure.

10th - South African poet Stephen Watson died aged 56; the cause of death was cancer. Most of his poetry is about the city of Cape Town, where he lived most of his life.

6th - American writer L.J.Davis died aged 70. His novels, including A Meaningful Life, focused on Brooklyn, New York.

4th - Welsh thriller writer Craig Thomas died aged 68; the cause of death was pneumonia. His best-known novel which brought him to global prominence, Firefox became a successful Hollywood film, both directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

MARCH

27th - British crime writer H.R.F.Keating died aged 84; the cause of death was heart failure. He published his first crime novel in 1960 and subsequently produced over fifty novels. He won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger in 1964 with the first of the Inspector Ghote novels, The Perfect Murder. In 1980 he won a second Gold Dagger with Murder of the Maharajah and in 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Diamond Dagger for a lifetime’s achievement.

26th - British author Diana Wynne Jones died aged 76; the cause of death was lung cancer. She is best remembered for writing fantasy novels for children, including the Chrestomanci series and the novels Howl's Moving Castle and The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

2nd - American poet John Haines died aged 86. He published nine collections of poetry, including For the Century's End: Poems 1990-1999. He was appointed the Poet Laureate of Alaska in 1969.

Icelandic writer Thor Vilhjálmsson died aged 85. In 1988 he won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for his novel Grámosinn glóir (Justice Undone).

FEBRUARY

26th - Czech Jewish author Arnošt Lustig died aged 84; he had been suffering from lung cancer for five years. During World War II he spent time at the Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps; his works often involve the Holocaust. In 2008 he became the eighth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize. His most renowned books are A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova, Dita Saxova and Lovely Green Eyes.

16th - Prominent Lithuanian poet and playwright Justinas Marcinkevičius died aged 80. In 2001 he received the Nacionalinė kultūros ir meno premija (Lithuanian National Prize), which is awarded annually for achievements in culture and the arts.

11th - Finnish poet and author Bo Carpelan died aged 84, the cause of death was cancer. He was twice awarded the Finlandia prize, once in 1993 for Urwind, and again in 2005 for Berg.

6th - Andrée Chedid, a French poet and novelist of Lebanese descent, died aged 90. She was awarded the Mallarmé prize in 1976 and the 2002 Prix Goncourt for poetry.

5th - English children's novelist Brian Jacques died aged 71, the cause of death was a heart attack. He was the author of the Redwall series.

3rd - French writer, novelist, poet and literary critic Édouard Glissant died aged 82. He is widely recognised as having been one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.

JANUARY

27th - Canadian crime novelist Michael Van Rooy died aged 42; the cause of death was a heart attack. He wrote the Monty Haaviko series, the first of which is An Ordinary Decent Criminal.

24th - Russian-language poet and playwright Anna Yablonskaya, one of the victims of the Domodedovo Airport bombing.

23rd - Yugoslavian poet Novica Tadić. His collections include Night Mail and Dark Things.

22nd - South Korean novelist Park Wan-suh died aged 79; the cause of death was cancer. She won many Korean literary awards including, in 1981 the Isang Literary Prize and in 1990 the Korean Literature Award. Park’s translated novels include Who Ate Up All the Shinga? which sold some 1.5 million copies in Korean and was well-reviewed in English translation.

20th - American novelist, poet and Professor of English at Duke University Reynolds Price died aged 77; the cause of death was a heart attack.

17th - French novelist Jean Dutourd died aged 91. His first work, Le Complexe de César appeared in 1946 and received the Prix Stendhal. He was elected to the Académie française on November 30, 1978.

15th - American writer Romulus Linney died aged 80. He was the author of three novels, thirteen plays and twenty-two short plays that have been produced in the United States and Europe. He was the father of actress Laura Linney.

British film, stage and television actress Susannah York died aged 72, the cause of death was bone marrow cancer. As well as her distinguished acting career she also wrote two children's fantasy novels, In Search of Unicorns (1973) and Lark's Castle (1976).

10th - American Edgar Award winning mystery writer Joe Gores died aged 79. He was known best for his novels and short stories set in San Francisco and featuring the fictional Dan Kearney and Associates (the DKA Files)private investigation firm specialising in repossessing cars, a thinly veiled escalation of his own experiences as a confidential sleuth and repo man. Gores was also recognized for his novels Hammett (1975), Spade and Archer (the 2009 prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon). Gores died 50 years to the day after Dashiell Hammett passed away.

Argentine poet, novelist and musician María Elena Walsh died aged 80; the cause of death was bone cancer. She was best known for her songs and books for children. She was named Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires in 1985.

4th - English children's author Dick King-Smith died aged 88. His best known book was The Sheep-Pig on which the movie Babe (1995) was based.

3rd - German writer of prose, poetry and children's literature Eva Strittmatter died aged 80. Her poetry books sold millions of copies, making her the most successful German poet of the second half of the 20th century.