Walker Percy, American novelist and essayist (b. 1916)
Walker Percy, Obl.S.B. (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.Trained as a physician at Columbia University, Percy decided to become a writer instead after a bout of tuberculosis. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian Shelby Foote and spent much of his life in Covington, Louisiana, where he died of prostate cancer in 1990.