Ilija Trojanow

Ilija Trojanow was born in Sofia in 1965 and grew up, among other places, in Nairobi after his family fled Bulgaria. From 1984/85 to 1989, he studied law and ethnology in Munich. There he founded the Kyrill & Method and Marino publishing houses, which specialized in African literature. Trojanow worked as a writer, translator, and essayist. His works include the novels The Collector of Worlds, Macht und Widerstand, and Tausend und ein Morgen, as well as travel writing and essays. His literary work received numerous awards, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2006, the Berlin Literature Prize in 2007, the Würth Prize for European Literature in 2010, the Carl Amery Prize in 2011, and the Heinrich Böll Prize in 2017.