Ruth Sophia Padel was born in London in 1946. She earned her doctorate in Greek at Oxford and then taught there from 1974 to 1984. Birkbeck College and Princeton were additional academic stations of this descendant of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Her first poetic work »Alibi« was followed by nine
Richard Flanagan was born in 1961 in the town of Longford, Tasmania, Australia, Flanagan grew up in the mining town of Rosebery and got his B.A. from the University of Tasmania. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated with a Master of Letters in
Riad Sattouf was born in 1978 in Paris of a Syrian father and a French mother. During a childhood and youth spent in Algeria, Libya, Syria, and France, he was an enthusiastic reader of comics. He trained as a pilot and also applied to the Gobelins school of visual communication
born in Baden-Württemberg in 1958, Gussmann later moved to the state of Saarland, where he spent years learning to speak without a trace of dialect. There too, he first encountered French. Due to military service, he moved to the Lüneburger Heide. After many exercises in true satire with genuine slapstick
is a Pakistani writer and expert on Pakistani politics and development. He has worked for national and international organizations such as the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank. As a journalist, he writes for international newspapers such as »The Friday Times« and blogs on »Jahane Rumi«. He survived an
Ramadan Ali is an actor who has lived in Germany since 2011. He worked as an actor and comedian in Syria but was repeatedly arrested and tortured before he fled the country. These experiences in his homeland have made him a political person. As a result, when he acts here
Philipp Felsch was born in Göttingen, Germany in 1972. He studied philosophy and received two research grants, then earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich in 2006. Since 2011, Junior Professor for History of the Humanities at the Humboldt University Berlin. His research focuses on the history of cartography,
Peter Stephan Jungk was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1952. The son of Jewish emigrants spent his childhood and youth in Vienna, West Berlin, and Salzburg. He then became an assistant director at the Theater of Basel and worked on several films before studying at the American Film Institute
Peter Schneider was born in Lübeck in 1940 and grew up in Freiburg, where he began his studies in German language, history and philosophy. He completed his education in Berlin. He wrote speeches for SPD politicians during the Bundestag election campaign in 1965. Schneider quickly found a role as one
Peter Brown was born in Hopewell, New Jersey, USA in 1979. He says he already began drawing stories with oddball characters and scenes when he was a child. As a teenager, he discovered his love for words and continued to record his ideas, now in writing. During his studies of
Pankaj Mishra was born in the northern Indian town of Jhansi in 1969. After studying commerce at the University of Allahabad, he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He began to write reviews for newspapers such as »The Indian
born in Berlin in 1968, studied literary translation in Düsseldorf and worked as an editor for Rowohlt publishers. Today she translates from French and English into German, primarily the works of contemporary authors such as William Boyd and Marie Darrieussecq and of modern greats like Louise de Vilmorin and Jean
