Lord of the Flies

William Golding (1911– 1993) was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911 and educated at Oxford University. His first book, Poems, was published in 1934. Following a stint in the Royal Navy and other diversions during and after World War II, Golding wrote his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), while teaching school. Many novels followed, including The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), and Free Fall (1959), as well as a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958), and a collection of shorter works, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Darkness Visible (1979) and the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage (1980). In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.” He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988. William Golding died in June 1993 and is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, in England.

Aimée de Jongh is an Eisner-nominated comic author and animator from the Netherlands. At the age of 22, Aimée’s career in comics took off with the popular daily series Snippers for the Dutch newspaper Metro. At 25, she then published her first graphic novel The Return of the Honey Buzzard, which won the Prix Saint-Michel and was adapted to a live-action film. Her international breakthrough came when Blossoms in Autumn was released, a graphic novel about elderly love, written by Belgian comic author Zidrou. In 2019, Aimée published her autobiographical comic TAXI!, about four intriguing taxi rides she made. Aimée’s most well known graphic novel is the award winning and Eisner nominated Days of Sand (Jours de Sable).