William Styron, US author

NEW YORK – William Styron, a prize-winning novelist whose work probed the horrors of slavery in his native United States and the Holocaust during World War II, has died at the age of 81.

Styron, who won the top US literary award for his 1967 novel ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’ and became a household name in the 1980s thanks to the film of his book ‘Sophie’s Choice’, died last Wednesday at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital in Massachusetts. Fellow author Norman Mailer said his work would endure due to its “unique power”.”No other American writer of my generation has had so omnipresent and exquisite a sense of the elegiac.That is no mean virtue in these years,” Mailer told the New York Times.Styron’s most widely known work was his 1979 novel ‘Sophie’s Choice’, thanks in large part to the film of the same name starring Meryl Streep.The novel tells the story of a young Polish Jewish woman, whose love life as an immigrant in Brooklyn is haunted by a terrible secret from her past in a Nazi concentration camp.Streep was to win an Oscar for her role as Sophie, but the novel itself drew criticism as well as praise for Styron.Some Holocaust survivors felt that a non-Jew could not write from the perspective of a death camp survivor, while feminists had similar misgivings over the issue of a man writing a woman’s story.Styron had run into similar problems in the late 1960s with his fictionalised account of the travails of the real-life Nat Turner, the leader of the most significant black slave revolt in early 19th-century America.Some black writers felt that Styron, a white whose closest link to Turner was that both were Virginians, had tinged his work with racist assumptions, and 10 of them even published a critical counter-blast.The book nevertheless won the Pulitzer Prize, and established Styron as a leading liberal writer.William Styron was born on June 11 1925 in the coastal city of Newport News, Virginia; his father was a shipbuilder and his mother was to die when he was only 13, an event which he said haunted him all his life.His studies at Duke University were interrupted by World War II, when Styron signed up with the Marines.He was stationed on the Pacific island of Okinawa, from where he believed he was to take part in a planned invasion of mainland Japan and thus face certain death.The invasion did not take place due to the dropping of atom bombs on the country.Styron achieved literary success with his first novel, ‘Lie Down in Darkness’, in 1951, but it was ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’ which brought him both acclaim and notoriety.Over 10 years were to ensue between the publication of that novel and the appearance of ‘Sophie’s Choice’, which gave Styron a wide readership in Europe as well as at home.In 1990 he published his last major work, ‘Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness’, which as its name suggests was an examination of the depression that had haunted Styron all his life.In tandem with other liberal writers Styron took part in several political initiatives, including a strong support of president Bill Clinton when he was threatened by a sex scandal in 1998, and a visit to Cuba with playwright Arthur Miller in 2000.In 1983 he served as president of the Cannes Film Festival in France.Styron is survived by his wife Rose, three daughters, a son and eight grandchildren.Nampa-AFPFellow author Norman Mailer said his work would endure due to its “unique power”.”No other American writer of my generation has had so omnipresent and exquisite a sense of the elegiac.That is no mean virtue in these years,” Mailer told the New York Times.Styron’s most widely known work was his 1979 novel ‘Sophie’s Choice’, thanks in large part to the film of the same name starring Meryl Streep.The novel tells the story of a young Polish Jewish woman, whose love life as an immigrant in Brooklyn is haunted by a terrible secret from her past in a Nazi concentration camp.Streep was to win an Oscar for her role as Sophie, but the novel itself drew criticism as well as praise for Styron.Some Holocaust survivors felt that a non-Jew could not write from the perspective of a death camp survivor, while feminists had similar misgivings over the issue of a man writing a woman’s story.Styron had run into similar problems in the late 1960s with his fictionalised account of the travails of the real-life Nat Turner, the leader of the most significant black slave revolt in early 19th-century America.Some black writers felt that Styron, a white whose closest link to Turner was that both were Virginians, had tinged his work with racist assumptions, and 10 of them even published a critical counter-blast.The book nevertheless won the Pulitzer Prize, and established Styron as a leading liberal writer.William Styron was born on June 11 1925 in the coastal city of Newport News, Virginia; his father was a shipbuilder and his mother was to die when he was only 13, an event which he said haunted him all his life.His studies at Duke University were interrupted by World War II, when Styron signed up with the Marines.He was stationed on the Pacific island of Okinawa, from where he believed he was to take part in a planned invasion of mainland Japan and thus face certain death.The invasion did not take place due to the dropping of atom bombs on the country.Styron achieved literary success with his first novel, ‘Lie Down in Darkness’, in 1951, but it was ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’ which brought him both acclaim and notoriety.Over 10 years were to ensue between the publication of that novel and the appearance of ‘Sophie’s Choice’, which gave Styron a wide readership in Europe as well as at home.In 1990 he published his last major work, ‘Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness’, which as its name suggests was an examination of the depression that had haunted Styron all his life.In tandem with other liberal writers Styron took part in several political initiatives, including a strong support of president Bill Clinton when he was threatened by a sex scandal in 1998, and a visit to Cuba with playwright Arthur Miller in 2000.In 1983 he served as president of the Cannes Film Festival in France.Styron is survived by his wife Rose, three daughters, a son and eight grandchildren.Nampa-AFP