William Saroyan

WILLIAM SAROYAN d1981. Armenian-American novelist, playwright and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940 and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment he turned it into a novel The Human Comedy. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno. Some of his best-known works are ; The Time of Your Life / My Name Is Aram and My Heart's in the Highlands. His two collections of short stories from the 1930s, Inhale Exhale (1936) and The Daring Young Man On the Flying Trapeze (1941) are regarded as among his major achievements and essential documents of the cultural history of the period on the American West Coast. He died in California aged 72 on May 18th 1981