Biographical note

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. A novelist, playwright and translator, he is the author of such acclaimed works as The Moravian Night, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and Repetition. The recipient of multiple literary awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the International Ibsen Award, Handke is also a filmmaker. He wrote and directed adaptations of his novels The Left-Handed Woman and Absence, and co-wrote the screenplays for Wim Wenders' Wrong Movie and Wings of Desire. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019. Ralph Manheim was a Jewish-American translator of German and French literature. He translated the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, Martin Heidegger and Hermann Hesse, among others. Manheim received the 1964 PEN Translation Prize, the 1970 National Book Award in the Translation category and a 1983 MacArthur Fellowship in Literary Studies. He won the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, in 1988. He died in 1992.