Felix Salten

Salten was born in Budapest, grew up in Vienna, and earned his living as a journalist and critic in the cafe circles around Jung-Wien. Bambi: A Life in the Woods appeared in 1923 and is far bleaker than its reputation suggests, a book about being hunted, which German authorities banned in 1936 as a political allegory. He sold the film rights for a very small sum, and the 1942 Disney version buried the original almost entirely. He is also widely believed to have written an anonymous explicit novel that scandalised Vienna, though he never admitted to it. He left for Switzerland in 1938 and died in Zurich in 1945.