Hanns-Josef Ortheil

Hanns-Josef Ortheil, born in Cologne in 1951, is a German writer and pianist. He studied art history, German studies, philosophy, comparative literature and musicology in Mainz, Göttingen, Paris and Rome, and received his doctorate from the University of Mainz. He later served as a professor of creative writing and cultural journalism at the University of Hildesheim. His work comprises more than seventy books and has received numerous awards, including the Thomas Mann Prize, the Nicolas Born Prize and the Hannelore Greve Literature Prize. His novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. During his childhood and youth, he was initially prepared for a career as a pianist; he wrote his first texts under his father’s guidance in the Westerwald region.