NEW YORK: William Styron, whose 1979 novel Sophie's Choice was made into an acclaimed film and who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Confessions of Nat Turner died on Wednesday in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, The New York Times reported.
Styron, who was 81, died of pneumonia after a long illness, his daughter Alexandra Styron told the Times.
Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1925, Styron was the son of a shipyard engineer who suffered from depression.
His mother died when he was 13, and Styron was soon sent to a boys'' preparatory school.
After college, he enlisted in the Marines, where he rose to first lieutenant during World War Two.
His first novel, which appeared when he was 26, was Lie Down in Darkness (1951). It tells the story of a young woman's descent into suicide.
He followed that with The Long March (1957) and Set This House on Fire (1960).
Styron made his name with The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), the story of a slave who led a bloody and disastrous slave insurrection before the Civil War.
Styron won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, which some criticized as a tinged with racism.
His best-known book was Sophie's Choice (1979), the tragic relationship of a Polish Holocaust survivor's relationship in Brooklyn with a Virginia writer.
It was made into a movie with Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for best actress, and an opera by Nicholas Maw, that had its US premiere in September.
