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racquets

(Encyclopedia)racquets, game played by two or four persons on a court 60 by 30 ft (18.3 m by 9.1 m); it is surrounded by three walls 30 ft (9.1 m) high and a backwall 15 ft (4.6 m) high. The ball, 1 in. (2.54 cm) i...

Sillitoe, Alan

(Encyclopedia)Sillitoe, Alan, 1928–2010, English writer, b. Nottingham. The son of an illiterate tannery worker, he grew up in poverty, left school at 14, and was himself a factory worker as a teenager. One of th...

Ha Jin

(Encyclopedia)Ha Jin, pseud. of Jin Xuefei, 1956–, Chinese-American writer, grad. Heilongjiang Univ. (B.A. 1981), Shandong Univ. (M.A., 1984), Brandeis (M.A., Ph.D., 1993). In the early 1980s he came to the Unite...

Onetti, Juan Carlos

(Encyclopedia)Onetti, Juan Carlos, 1909–94, Uruguayan novelist and short story writer, b. Montevideo. One of the great 20th-century Latin American novelists, Onetti wrote of the dissipation of modern urban societ...

Ishiguro, Kazuo

(Encyclopedia)Ishiguro, Kazuo, 1954–, English novelist, b. Nagasaki. His family left Japan in 1960 and immigrated to England, where he attended the universities of Kent (B.A., 1978) and East Anglia (M.A., 1980). ...

Figueras, Estanislao

(Encyclopedia)Figueras, Estanislao āstäˌnēsläˈō fēgāˈräs [key], 1819–82, Spanish politician. After the overthrow (1868) of Isabella II, he became leader of the Republican party. He opposed King Amadeus...

Blériot, Louis

(Encyclopedia)Blériot, Louis lwē blārēōˈ [key], 1872–1936, French aviator and inventor. He devoted the fortune acquired by his invention of an automobile searchlight to the invention and construction of mon...

Tokarczuk, Olga

(Encyclopedia)Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962–, Polish writer. Widely considered the foremost Polish novelist of her generation, she also is politically active and has been a frequent critic of Poland's right-wing governme...

yak

(Encyclopedia)yak, bovine mammal, Bos grunniens, of the Tibet region of China and adjacent areas. It is oxlike in build, with short, thick legs, humped shoulders, large upcurved horns, and a thick coat that hangs d...

Grande Prairie

(Encyclopedia)Grande Prairie Fr. gräNd prâˌrēˈ [key], city, W Alta., Canada, NW of Edmonton. It is the chief business ...
 

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