Author · China
Ba Jin
Died in 2005
Li Feigan, known as Ba Jin, was born on 25 November 1904 in Chengdu, in a large household of landowners where his father held an office. Won over to anarchism by reading Kropotkin, he left in 1927 for France, where he wrote his first novel. His pen name, adopted in 1929, joins the first syllable of Bakunin and the last of Kropotkin, an origin he later disowned according to the Guardian. Forbidden to write during the Cultural Revolution, he lost his wife in 1973, who died for lack of care; president of the writers' union from 1981, he died on 17 October 2005.