Biographical note

MARIE LUISE KNOTT is a journalist, translator, and author living in Berlin. She is the founder of the German edition of Le Monde diplomatique and was its editor-in-chief for eleven years. She has written numerous essays on art and literature, as well as two important studies of Hannah Arendt. DAVID DOLLENMAYER is an emeritus professor of German at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His translations include works by Bertolt Brecht, Elias and Veza Canetti, Michael Kleeberg, and Hansjörg Schertenleib. He is the recipient of the 2008 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize (for Moses Rosenkranz's Childhood) and the 2010 Translation Prize of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York (for Michael Köhlmeier's Idyll with Drowning Dog).