John Updike, 76

American writer John Updike, author of "Rabbit, Run", "Rabbit Is Rich", and many other books, has passed away.

John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters, died Tuesday. He was 76 and lived in Beverley Farms. Massachusetts.

The cause of death was lung cancer, his publisher, Knopf, said in a statement.

Click on this link to read the piece about him at The International Herald Tribune.