Iris Hanika, born in Würzburg in 1962, has lived in Berlin since 1979. She received the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize in 2006. Her novel Treffen sich zwei was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2008. The Bureau of Past Management was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature and the LiteraTour Nord Prize. She was a resident at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2017/18. Her most recent novel Echos Kammern won the Hermann Hesse Literaturpreis and the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair.