Question: Who is an American novelist, poet and critic, the author of sixteen books: six novels, eight volumes of poetry, a critical study of film noir, and a novel for children, Allan Bloom or  Nicholas Christopher ? 

Lawrence Thornton (born 1937) is an American novelist and critic living in Claremont, California.  His most well known novel, "Imagining Argentina", employs the methods of magic realism to tell a story of the Dirty War (1976-1983).  This novel, along with "Naming the Spirits" and "Tales from the Blue Archives", makes up the Argentina Trilogy.  His work, published in eighteen languages, is frequently taught in schools and universities.  In 1994 a film was made of "Imagining Argentina" by Christopher Hampton starring Antonio Banderas, Emma Thompson and Claire Bloom .  In 1996, Zorongo Flamenco, a Minneapolis-based flamenco troupe, staged a flamenco version of the novel that featured an international cast of dancers and singers.  In addition to writing six novels, he is the author of a non-fiction study of modern fiction, "Unbodied Hope", as well as scholarly articles in PMLA, Comparative Literature, American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies and other learned journals.  During the 1990s he was a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review. <SEP>  He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992) was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician.  He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University of Chicago.  Bloom championed the idea of Great Books education and became famous for his criticism of contemporary American higher education, with his views being expressed in his bestselling 1987 book, "The Closing of the American Mind".  Characterized as a conservative in the popular media, Bloom denied that he was a conservative, and asserted that what he sought to defend was the 'theoretical life'.  Saul Bellow wrote "Ravelstein", a roman à clef based on Bloom, his friend and colleague at the University of Chicago. <SEP> Vishnu Vāman Shirwādkar (27 February 1912 – 10 March 1999), popularly known by his pen name, Kusumāgraj, was an eminent Marathi poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, apart from being a humanist, who wrote of freedom, justice and emancipation of the deprived, In a career spanning five decades starting in pre-independence era, he wrote 16 volumes of poems, three novels, eight volumes of short stories, seven volumes of essays, 18 plays and six one-act plays.  His works like the "Vishakha" (1942), a collection of lyrics, inspired a generation into the Indian freedom movement, and is today considered one of the masterpieces of Indian literature, apart from his play, "Natsamrat", which has an important place in Marathi literature.  He was the recipient of several State awards, and National awards including the 1974 Sahitya Akademi Award in Marathi for "Natsamrat", Padma Bhushan (1991) and the Jnanapith Award in 1987; he also remained chairperson of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in 1989. <SEP> Nicholas Christopher (born 1951) is an American novelist, poet and critic, the author of sixteen books: six novels, eight volumes of poetry, a critical study of film noir, and a novel for children.