David Foster Wallace found dead

The American novelist David Foster Wallace, famous for his epic Infinite Jest, has been found dead, aged 46.

Wallace was found on Friday evening at his house in Claremont California, by his wife. He had hanged himself.

The author is best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, an epic satire on contemporary America which runs to over 1,000 pages, complete with extensive footnotes. He based one of its strands - set in a high-powered tennis acamedy - on his own experiences as a ranked junior tennis player.

Since then, the Wallace taught creative writing at Pomona College in California, and published two collections of stories, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Oblivion, two of journalism and essays and a non-fiction book about infinity (his university studies included work on modal logic and mathematics).

Wallace received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1997, while Infinite Jest was chosen by Time magazine as one of its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".