Beautiful minds

YOU see their faces lining the bookshelves of Kinokuniya, and their names appearing in the New York Times bestseller lists. Which is a given, considering they're award-winning authors, but the people behind the pages do more than just write. They're polymaths - or people adept at more than one skill - which adds to the already unfair distribution of talent in their favour.

Paul Theroux, for one, is often associated with writing travelogues, but he is no stranger to writing novels and children's books, besides speaking at least seven languages. Naomi Wolf has had at least four bestselling books, but aside from her successful writing career she is also an advocate for feminism, and a political activist.

And then you have Geoff Dyer, who writes about anything under the sun, from jazz to yoga, from the World War I to a critique of John Berger's works. Not to mention the eccentric war journalist William T Vollmann, whose interests include writing novels and short stories, as well as creating paintings, photographs and block prints of his female alter ego - Dolores.