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US novelist Updike dies of cancer US novelist Updike dies of cancer
(20 minutes later)
Renowned US novelist John Updike has died at the age of 76, his publisher has announced. He had been suffering from lung cancer.Renowned US novelist John Updike has died at the age of 76, his publisher has announced. He had been suffering from lung cancer.
Updike won many top literary prizes, including Pulitzers for two volumes of his famous Rabbit series.Updike won many top literary prizes, including Pulitzers for two volumes of his famous Rabbit series.
In about 50 books over half-a-century, he chronicled sex, divorce and other aspects of post-war America. In about 50 books over half-a-century, he chronicled sex, divorce and other aspects of life in post-war America.
He once described his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class". He once told an interviewer that his subject was "the American small town, Protestant middle class".
The son of a schoolmaster, Updike was born in Pennsylvania in 1932 and, after attending Harvard, spent a year as an art student in Oxford in the UK.
My subject is the American Protestant small town middle class John Updike Obituary: John Updike
Later he joined the staff of the New Yorker magazine, to which he contributed numerous poems, essays and short stories.
Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published in 1959. The following year, though, saw the publication of the book which established him as one of the greatest novelists of his age, Rabbit, Run.
It marked the debut of his most enduring character, Harold "Rabbit" Angstrom.
In the following decades he would write sequels, including Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, charting the course of a man's life - his job, marriage, affairs, minor triumphs and death.
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