Eva Menasse was born in Vienna in 1970 and has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She began her career as a journalist, and has published several bestselling novels and short story collections, as well as essay collections. Her accolades include the Heinrich Boll Prize, the Friedrich Holderlin Prize, the Jonathan Swift Prize, the Austrian Book Prize, the Ludwig Borne Prize, and a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Her books have been translated into numerous languages and have sold 500,000 copies.