Capote, Truman

(US, 1924–84)

Born in New Orleans and raised in Alabama, Capote's precocious talent won him many prizes in literary competitions. The publication of In Cold Blood (1966) aroused a good deal of controversy, dividing the critics because of its hybrid form—the fictionalizing of real events—thus coining the term ‘faction’. It is a gripping and gruesome read, about two vicious criminals who murder a farmer and his family in the wilds of Kansas, and are then pursued, caught, and executed. Capote's other works might have been written by someone else. Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) is a sensitive account of adolescence in the Deep South, while Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) is a frothy story of fancy-free society girl Holly Golightly, made into a film with Audrey Hepburn. A writer of genuine talent, Capote never fulfilled his early promise, leaving behind at his death, instead of a major novel, the unfinished, inconsequential Answered Prayers (1986).

Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Christopher Isherwood. See CRIME  TH