Maya Angelou

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy (born 1961) is an Indian author and activist whose debut novel *The God of Small Things* (1997) won the Booker Prize and sold more than eight million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling novels ever by a non-expatriate Indian author. Born in Shillong and raised in Kerala, Roy trained as an architect before writing her debut. After its success, she turned primarily to political essays — opposing nuclear testing, the Narmada Dam displacement, and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — collected in *The Algebra of Infinite Justice* (2002) and *Listening to Grasshoppers* (2009). Her second novel, *The Ministry of Utmost Happiness* (2017), arrived twenty years after her first. She remains one of India's most fearless public intellectuals.

Mo Yan

Mo Yan (born 1955) is a Chinese author who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012, cited for his "hallucinatory realism" that "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." Born Guan Moye in Gaomi, Shandong — a rural area that becomes the setting of much of his fiction — he left school during the Cultural Revolution to work in the fields, then served in the People's Liberation Army. His international reputation was established by *Red Sorghum* (1987), a visceral novel of wartime Shandong that was adapted into a Zhang Yimou film. His subsequent novels — *The Republic of Wine* (1992), *Big Breasts and Wide Hips* (1995), and *Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out* (2006) — blend Chinese folklore, Rabelaisian excess, and political critique. The Nobel Prize generated controversy because of his silence on the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, but he remains the most internationally recognized Chinese author.

Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle is a renowned spiritual teacher and author, best known for his books "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth." His teachings focus on the importance of presence, mindfulness, and awakening to one's true self. Tolle's work has inspired millions to live more consciously and find peace in the present moment.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi (born 1945 in Rangoon, Burma) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1991). The daughter of Burma's independence hero General Aung San, she returned to Burma in 1988 during the pro-democracy uprising and became its symbol. She was placed under house arrest by the military junta for most of the following two decades — spending approximately 15 of 21 years (1989–2010) confined to her Rangoon home — while declining to leave to be with her dying husband in England. She led her party to a landslide election victory in 2015. Her reputation has been complicated by her silence on the Rohingya genocide during her time in government (2016–2021). She was again detained following the 2021 military coup.