Patricia Highsmith (American writer)
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Born : January 19, 1921
Died : February 4, 1995
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American novelist and short-story writer who was best known for psychological thrillers, in which she delved into the nature of guilt, innocence, good, and evil.

Highsmith in 1942 and traveled to Europe in 1949, eventually settling there. In 1950 she published Strangers on a Train, an intriguing story of two men, one ostensibly good and the other ostensibly evil, whose lives become inextricably entangled. The following year the novel was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock, using a screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) is the first of several books featuring the adventures of a likable murderer, Tom Ripley, who takes on the identities of his victims. The novel won various awards for mystery writing. Ripley also appears in Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974). Several novels in the Ripley series were adapted for TV and film.

Samuel Beckett (Irish author)
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Born : April 13, 1906
Died : December 22, 1989
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author, critic, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. He wrote in both French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially Waiting for Godot.

It was not until 1951, however, that these works saw the light of day. After many refusals, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, Beckett’s lifelong companion, finally succeeded in finding a publisher for Molloy. When this book not only proved a modest commercial success but also was received with enthusiasm by the French critics, the same publisher brought out the two other novels and Waiting for Godot. It was with the amazing success of Waiting for Godot at the small Théâtre in January 1953, that Beckett’s rise to world fame began. Beckett continued writing, but more slowly than in the immediate postwar years. Plays for the stage and radio and a number of prose works occupied much of his attention.