Hanns-Josef Ortheil, born in 1951, is one of the most important contemporary German authors and has received many awards for his work, among them the Brandenburg Literature Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, the Nicolas Born Prize and the Hannelore Greve Literature Prize. In 2009 he became the first director of the newly founded "Institute for Literary Writing and Literary Studies" at the University of Hildesheim. His novels have been translated into more than 20 languages.