The poet and translator Mila Haugová was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1942 and raised in Slovakia. Daughter of a Hungarian mother and Slovakian father, she grew up speaking two languages. Her father, a qualified farmer, was imprisoned as a so-called “class enemy” and consquently the author was prevented from
The poet Michèle Métail was born in Paris in 1950. She studied German Language and Literature and Sinology and wrote a dissertation on variations in form in classical Chinese verse. Métail from time to time writes poetry using formats taken from other media. In her book ‘Les horizons du sol’
Melvin Burgess was born in London in 1954. He is one of the most pr olific and most widely discussed British authors of young people’s fiction. He grew up in Sussex and Surrey, moved to Bristol after he had finished school and later to London and spent fifteen years experimenting
Menis Koumandareas was born in Athens in 1931. He began to write at a young age, but first earned his living working for insurance and shipping agencies. In 1962 his first publication, the book of stories ‘Ta michanákia’, marked the start of an extensive and award-winning prose oeuvre, which has
Martin Walser was born in Wasserburg on Lake Constance in 1927. He studied Literature, History and Philosophy in Regensburg and Tübingen, where he wrote his doctorate on Franz Kafka in 1951. From 1949 to 1957 Walser worked as a reporter, director and radio playwright for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk regional radio
Ludmila Petrushevskaya was born in Moscow in 1938. She comes from an intellectual family, which for several generations was subject to reprisals; this only stopped at the beginning of Perestroika. Petrushevskaya studied Journalism at Lomonossov University. From 1957 to 1973 she worked as a radio and television journalist. From 1974
Lorand Gaspar was born in Marosvàsàrhely (Transsylvania), Romania, in 1925. He grew up in a Jewish home speaking three languages (Hungarian, Romanian and German) and also had French lessons from an early age. He was fascinated by Rimbaud’s poetry, as well as by Einstein’s theory of relativity. As a child
Lewis Nkosi who was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1936 is considered one of Africa’s most important authors as well as literature and culture critics. He has been critically commenting on the cultural and political developments in his country and on the African continent since the 50s, when still
Leon de Winter was born in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Holland, in 1954. His parents were the only members of his Jewish family who survived the Holocaust. Leon de Winter started writing at the age of twelve, as a reaction to his father’s early death. Central themes of his work have since been
Leïla Marouane was born in Algeria in 1960. She studied Medicine and Literature in Algiers and then worked as a journalist. Due to the tense situation in Algeria, she has lived and worked as a freelance writer in Paris since 1990. To date she has published four novels and one
Lee Hochol was born in 1932 not far from the port city of Wonsan in what today is North Korea. Shortly after the civil war started in 1950, he was drafted into the People’s Army. When he was a prisoner of war, he met the first Koreans who had Western
Lee Siegel was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1945. He studied Comparative Literature at the University of California in Berkeley and fine arts at Columbia University in New York. After completing his doctoral dissertation in the field of Sanskrit at Oxford University, he was hired by the University of
