The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#351
Ron Silliman
#7333
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet. He has now begun writing a new poem, Universe, the first section of which appears to be called Revelator.
Go to Profile#352
Mario Benedetti
#4652
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Mario Benedetti Farrugia , was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet and an integral member of the Generación del 45. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages, he was not well known in the English-speaking world. In the Spanish-speaking world he is considered one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#353
Maxine Hong Kingston
#6953
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Maxine Hong Kingston is an American novelist. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese Americans.
Go to Profile#354
Timothy Zahn
#4906
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Timothy Zahn is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy. He is known best for his prolific collection of Star Wars books, chiefly the Thrawn series, and has published several other series of sci-fi and fantasy novels of his own original creation, in addition to many works of short fiction.
Go to Profile#355
Mary Lefkowitz
#3519
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Mary R. Lefkowitz is an American scholar of Classics. She is the Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she previously worked from 1959 to 2005. She has published ten books over the course of her career.
Go to Profile#356
Andrzej Sapkowski
#5145
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy writer, essayist, translator and a trained economist. He is best known for his six-volume series of books The Witcher, which revolves around the eponymous "witcher," a monster-hunter, Geralt of Rivia. It began with the publication of Sword of Destiny , and was completed with the publication of standalone prequel novel Season of Storms . The saga has been popularized through television, stage, comic books, video games and translated into 37 languages making him the second most-translated Polish science fiction and fantasy writer after Stanisław Lem.
Go to Profile#357
Rosario Ferré
#7254
Overall Influence
1938 - 2016 (78 years)
Rosario Ferré Ramírez de Arellano was a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferré, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972.
Go to Profile#358
Oriana Fallaci
#747
Overall Influence
1929 - 2006 (77 years)
Oriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist and author. A partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her "long, aggressive and revealing interviews" with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Go to Profile#359
Philip Pullman
#4680
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.
Go to Profile#360
Jeanette Winterson
#5404
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Jeanette Winterson is an English author. Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against convention. Other novels explore gender polarities and sexual identity and later ones the relations between humans and technology. She broadcasts and teaches creative writing. She has won a Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, a BAFTA Award for Best Drama, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the St. Louis Literary Award, and the Lambda Literary Award twice. She has received an Officer of the Order of t...
Go to Profile#361
Larry McCaffery
#8088
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary fiction, and Bruce Springsteen. He also played a role in helping to establish science fiction as a major literary genre.
Go to Profile#362
Vladimir Toporov
#5604
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov was a leading Russian philologist associated with the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. His wife was Tatyana Elizarenkova. He is also recognized as a prominent Balticist. Background Toporov authored more than 1500 works, including Akhmatova and Dante , Towards the Reconstruction of the Indo-European Rite , Aeneas: a Man of Destiny , Myth. Rite. Symbol. Image , Holiness and Saints in the Russian Spiritual Culture , and Petersburg Text of Russian Literature . He translated the Dhammapada into Russian and supervised the ongoing edition of the most complete vocabulary of...
Go to Profile#363
W. J. T. Mitchell
#4891
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
William John Thomas Mitchell is an American academic. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He was the editor of Critical Inquiry for 42 years, from 1978 to 2020, and also contributes to the journal October.
Go to Profile#364
Nathan Rabin
#3795
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nathan Rabin is an American film and music critic. Rabin was the first head writer for The A.V. Club, a position he held until he left the Onion organization in 2013. In 2013, Rabin became a staff writer for The Dissolve, a film website operated by Pitchfork Media. Two of his featured columns at The Dissolve were "Forgotbusters" and "Streaming University" .
Go to Profile#365
Claire Messud
#10562
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children . Early life Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the United States as a teenager. Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is a Pied-noir from French Algeria. She was educated at the University of Toronto Schools and Milton Academy. She did undergraduate and graduate studies at Yale University and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse James Wood.
Go to Profile#366
Ron Charles
#8094
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Ron Charles is a book critic at The Washington Post. His awards include the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award Nona Balakian Citation for book reviews, and 1st Place for A&E Coverage from the Society for Features Journalism in 2011. He was one of three jurors for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
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Adolf Muschg
#9211
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Adolf Muschg is a Swiss writer and professor of literature. Muschg was a member of the Gruppe Olten. Biography Adolf Muschg was born in Zollikon, canton of Zürich, Switzerland. He studied German studies, English studies and philosophy at the universities of Zürich and Cambridge and earned his doctoral degree with a work about Ernst Barlach.
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Terrence McNally
#2315
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Patrick Leigh Fermor
#4078
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot. He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War, and was widely seen as Britain's greatest living travel writer, on the basis of books such as A Time of Gifts . A BBC journalist once termed him "a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene".
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Clifton Fadiman
#4043
Overall Influence
1904 - 1999 (95 years)
Clifton Paul "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, and radio and television personality. He began his work in radio, and switched to television later in his career. Background Born in Brooklyn, New York, Fadiman was a nephew of the emigree Ukrainian psychologist Boris Sidis and a first cousin of the child prodigy William James Sidis.
Go to Profile#371
Louise Erdrich
#6564
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
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Greg Rucka
#3211
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Gregory Rucka is an American writer known for the series of novels starring his character Atticus Kodiak, the creator-owned comic book series Whiteout, Queen & Country, Stumptown and Lazarus, as well as lengthy runs on such titles as Detective Comics, Wonder Woman and Gotham Central for DC Comics, and Elektra, Wolverine and The Punisher for Marvel. He has written a substantial amount of supplemental material for a number of DC Comics' line-wide and inter-title crossovers, including "No Man's Land", "Infinite Crisis" and "New Krypton".
Go to Profile#373
Jackie Kay
#7906
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Jacqueline Margaret Kay, , is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers , Trumpet and Red Dust Road . Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
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Fay Weldon
#3827
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Fay Weldon was an English author, essayist and playwright. Over the course of her 55-year writing career, she published 31 novels, including Puffball , The Cloning of Joanna May , Wicked Women and The Bulgari Connection , but was most well-known as the writer of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil which was televised by the BBC in 1986.
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Amy Tan
#5778
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Amy Ruth Tan is an American author of Chinese heritage, best known for the novel The Joy Luck Club , which was adapted into a 1993 film. She is also known for other novels, short story collections, children's books, and a memoir.
Go to Profile#376
Paule Marshall
#6154
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Paule Marshall was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant. Life and career Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York, to Adriana Viola Clement Burke and Sam Burke on April 9, 1929. Marshall's father had migrated from the Caribbean island of Barbados to New York in 1919 and, during her childhood, deserted the family to join a quasi-religious cult, leaving his wife to raise their children by herself. Marshall wrote about how her career was inspired by observ...
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Nicanor Parra
#4527
Overall Influence
1914 - 2018 (104 years)
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. Parra described himself as an "anti-poet," due to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function; after recitations he would exclaim "Me retracto de todo lo dicho" .
Go to Profile#378
Jerzy Kosiński
#8079
Overall Influence
1933 - 1991 (58 years)
Jerzy Kosiński was a Polish-American novelist and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen.
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Charles de Lint
#7688
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Charles de Lint is a Canadian writer of Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese ancestry. He is married to, and plays music with, MaryAnn Harris. Primarily a writer of fantasy fiction, he has composed works of urban fantasy, contemporary magical realism, and mythic fiction. Along with authors like Terri Windling, Emma Bull, and John Crowley, de Lint during the 1980s pioneered and popularized the subgenre of urban fantasy. He writes novels, novellas, short stories, poetry]], and lyrics. His most famous works include: the Newford series of books , as well as Moonheart, The Mystery of Grace, The Painted Boy and A Circle of Cats .
Go to Profile#380
Ana Lydia Vega
#8724
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ana Lydia Vega is a Puerto Rican writer. Biography Her parents were Virgilio Vega, an "oral poet" from Coamo, Puerto Rico, and Doña María Santana, a teacher from the town of Arroyo. She went to school at the Academia del Sagrado Corazón in Santurce, and studied at the University of Puerto Rico, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1968. She went on to study at the University of Provence, France, receiving a master's degree in French literature in 1971, and a doctorate in French literature in 1978. She has received the Premio Casa de las Américas and the Premio Juan Rulfo . In 1985 she was selected as the "Author of the Year" by the Puerto Rico Society of Authors.
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Jamaica Kincaid
#7389
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua . She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
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Reynolds Price
#7059
Overall Influence
1933 - 2011 (78 years)
Edward Reynolds Price was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical scholarship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Go to Profile#383
John Miles Foley
#7246
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
John Miles Foley was a scholar of comparative oral tradition, particularly medieval and Old English literature, Homer and Serbian epic. He was the founder of the academic journal Oral Tradition and the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri, where he was Curators' Professor of Classical Studies and English and W. H. Byler Endowed Chair in the Humanities.
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Les Daniels
#6321
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
Leslie Noel Daniels III, better known as Les Daniels , was an American writer. Background Daniels attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.
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Jonathan Lethem
#6487
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.
Go to Profile#386
Irvine Welsh
#4145
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist and short story writer. His 1993 novel Trainspotting was made into a film of the same name. He has also written plays and screenplays, and directed several short films.
Go to Profile#387
Idries Shah
#4722
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Idries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghan author, thinker and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.
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Thom Gunn
#6801
Overall Influence
1929 - 2004 (75 years)
Thomson William "Thom" Gunn was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, free-verse style. Gunn wrote about his experience moving to San Francisco from England. He received numerous literary honors, and his best poems are reputed to possess a restrained elegance of philosophy.
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Peter Milligan
#3809
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Peter Milligan is a British comic book writer who has written extensively for both British and American comic book industries. In the UK, Milligan has contributed to numerous anthology titles including 2000 AD, Revolver, Eagle and A1, and helped launch the influential magazine Deadline. In the US, he is best known for his frequent contributions to DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, which include the revamped DC properties Shade, the Changing Man and Human Target, a four-year run on the imprint's premier title Hellblazer, and original series Enigma, The Extremist, Egypt and Greek Street, as well as t...
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James Kirkup
#5675
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
James Harold Kirkup, FRSL was an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote over 45 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He wrote under many pen-names including James Falconer, Aditya Jha, Jun Honda, Andrew James, Taeko Kawai, Felix Liston, Edward Raeburn, and Ivy B. Summerforest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
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George Carlin
#1410
Overall Influence
1937 - 2008 (71 years)
George Denis Patrick Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of counterculture comedians". He was known for his black comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. His "seven dirty words" routine was central to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government's power to censor indecent material on public airwaves.
Go to Profile#392
Alan Davis
#4942
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Alan Davis is an English artist and writer of comic books, known for his work on titles such as Captain Britain, The Uncanny X-Men, ClanDestine, Detective Comics, Excalibur, JLA: The Nail and JLA: Another Nail.
Go to Profile#393
N. Scott Momaday
#7247
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Navarre Scott Momaday is a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance. His follow-up work The Way to Rainy Mountain blends folklore with memoir. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work's celebration and preservation of indigenous oral and art tradition. He holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Paul Beatty
#8325
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Paul Beatty is an American author and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University. In 2016, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. It was the first time a writer from the United States was honored with the Man Booker.
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Efren Abueg
#15544
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Efren Reyes Abueg is a well-known and recognized Filipino-language creative writer, editor, author, novelist, short story writer, essayist, fictionist, professor, textbook writer, and anthologist in the Philippines. His works appeared on magazines such as Liwayway, Bulaklak, Tagumpay, Mod, and Homelife.
Go to Profile#396
Jorge Amado
#4654
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. He remains the best known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, including Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in 1976. His work reflects the image of a Mestiço Brazil and is marked by religious syncretism. He depicted a cheerful and optimistic country that was beset, at the same time, with deep social and economic differences.
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Tobias Wolff
#8158
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army . He has written four short story collections and two novels including The Barracks Thief , which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015.
Go to Profile#398
Susan Bassnett
#6829
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Susan Edna Bassnett, is a translation theorist and scholar of comparative literature. She served as pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Warwick for ten years and taught in its Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, which closed in 2009. As of 2016, she is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Universities of Glasgow and Warwick. Educated around Europe, she began her career in Italy and has lectured at universities in the United States. In 2007, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Go to Profile#399
Madeleine L'Engle
#5572
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
Go to Profile#400
Aharon Appelfeld
#6073
Overall Influence
1932 - 2018 (86 years)
Aharon Appelfeld was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor. Biography Ervin Appelfeld was born in Jadova Commune, Storojineț County, in the Bukovina region of the Kingdom of Romania, now Ukraine. In an interview with the literary scholar, Nili Gold, in 2011, he remembered his home town in this district, Czernowitz, as "a very beautiful" place, full of schools and with two Latin gymnasiums, where fifty to sixty percent of the population was Jewish. In 1941, when he was nine years old, the Romanian Army retook his hometown after a year of Soviet occupation and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a forced labor camp in Romanian-controlled Transnistria.
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