He later went on to describe his experience in the orphanage in his writings.

Īt the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in Armenian Apostolic churches. William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908, in Fresno, California, to Armenak and Takuhi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, Ottoman Empire. Kurt Vonnegut has said that Saroyan was 'the first and still the greatest of all the American minimalists.” Biography He has been described in a Dickinson College news release as 'one of the most prominent literary figures of the mid-20th century' and by Stephen Fry as 'one of the most underrated writers of the century.' Fry suggests that 'he takes his place naturally alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner'. His two collections of short stories from the 1930s, Inhale Exhale (1936) and The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1941) are regarded as among his major achievements and essential documents of the cultural history of the period on the American West Coast. Some of his best-known works are The Time of Your Life, My Name Is Aram and My Heart's in the Highlands. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno. Saroyan wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Saroyan is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. William Saroyan ( / s ə ˈ r ɔɪ ə n/ Aug– May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

The human comedy novel