Ayn Rand (officially Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 [greg.] 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia) is a US-American Author.
She witnessed the Communist October Revolution, in which her Family (her father was a pharmacist) was expropriated and nearly starved at some point. Temporarily, she also was removed from the University (she had started studying at 16), just because her Family was "bourgeois". At this time, she had already chosen her Pseudonym.
After these Experiences, she is a staunch anti-Communist/-Collectivist. On the other hand, as an Atheist, she also doesn't fit into the Christian-Conservative camp.
Late 1925, she was granted a visa for a visit to her relatives in the United States of America. On January 17th in 1926, she left her city of birth and never returned. In August, she went to Hollywood, to work as a scriptwriter; here, she met her later husband, Frank O’Connor; they married on April 15, 1929.
She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to obtain permission to emigrate.
She and her husband were full-time volunteers for Republican Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign during the US Elections of 1940.
In 1936, her half-autobiographical novel We the Living was published, from which she made a Theatre play as well. In 1938, she wrote the Dystopia Anthem about a collectivist society in which even the Word "I" is outlawed.
Her favorite authors are Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo, and Friedrich Schiller.
