List of exophonic writers

This is a list of exophonic writers, i.e. those who write in a language not generally regarded as their first or mother tongue. For more on the phenomenon, see the main article Exophony.

The list below is deliberately brief, eschewing complex details of ethnicity/nationality and the like: the countries and/or languages given are merely a guide to the writer's principal origin and exophonic language - for details see the relevant article on the writer.

• Chinua Achebe, Nigerian native, who lived most of his later life in the United States. Native speaker of Igbo who wrote primarily in English.
• Sholem Aleichem, native of the Russian Empire who later emigrated to Switzerland. His native language was Yiddish but he also wrote in Hebrew and Russian.
• Nadeem Aslam, Pakistani-British novelist
• Samuel Beckett, Irish-French playwright and novelist
• José María Blanco White, Spanish-English writer
• André Brink, (South African) English-Afrikaans novelist
• Joseph Brodsky, Russian-American poet and essayist
• Eugen Chirovici, Romanian-British novelist
• Don Mee Choi, Korean-American poet and translator
• Emil Cioran, Romanian-French writer
• Joseph Conrad, Polish-British novelist
• Boris Fishman, Russian-American novelist
• Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American poet
• Julien Green, American writer who wrote in French
• Xiaolu Guo, Chinese-British novelist
• Najat El Hachmi, Moroccan-Catalan novelist and journalist
• Aleksandar Hemon, Bosnian-American novelist and journalist
• Stefan Heym, German-American novelist
• Rolando Hinojosa, American-Mexican novelist
• Khalid Hosseini, Afghan-American novelist
• Nancy Huston, Canadian novelist
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-British novelist
• Tahar Ben Jelloun, Moroccan-French novelist
• Ha Jin, Chinese-American poet and novelist
• Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet
• Yasmina Khadra, Algerian-French novelist
• Imam Ahmad Raza Khan, Indian Urdu-Arabic-Persian-Hindi Sufi poet and writer.
• Arthur Koestler, Hungarian-British author and journalist
• Agota Kristof, Hungarian-French novelist
• Milan Kundera, Czech-French writer
• Jhumpa Lahiri, British-American writer, writing in Italian
• Tahar Lamri, Algerian-Italian journalist and short story writer
• Claudileia Lemes Dias, Brazilian-Italian novelist
• Aga Lesiewicz, Polish-British novelist,
• Hideo Levy, American-born Japanese language author
• Yiyun Li, Chinese-American novelist and short story writer
• Jonathan Littell, American-French novelist
• Ramon Llull, Majorcan, Catalan-Latin-Arabic writer
• Lucian, second-century AD Syrian satirist, a native speaker of Syriac who wrote in Attic Greek
• Amin Maalouf, Lebanese-French novelist
• Merab Mamardashvili, Georgian philosopher who wrote exclusively in Russian
• Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist
• C.W. Nicol, Welsh-Japanese writer
• Téa Obreht, Bosniak-American novelist
• Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese-English/French poet
• Edith Philips, American-French language writer and educator
• Atiq Rahimi, Afghan/Persian-French and English novelist and filmmaker
• Ayn Rand, Russian-American novelist
• Elif Şafak, Turkish-English novelist and journalist
• Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar, Turkish-Persian poet
• Gary Shteyngart, Russian-American novelist
• Shumona Sinha, Indian-French novelist
• Tom Stoppard, Czech-British playwright
• Yoko Tawada, Japanese-German poet
• Stefan Themerson Polish-French-English novelist, poet, film-maker
• R.S. Thomas, English poet, Welsh memoirist and autobiographer
• Matthew Tree, English-Catalan writer and novelist
• Héctor Tobar, Guatemalan-American journalist and novelist
• Ayelet Tsabari, Israeli-Canadian writer
• Anselm Turmeda, Majorcan, Catalan-Arabic writer
• Voltaire, French philosopher who also wrote and published in English
• Caspar Vega, British-Estonian writer and actor
• David Zoppetti, Swiss-Japanese novelist and journalist