Michael Hofmann was born in Germany in 1957, and grew up in England, Scotland and the US. Since 1983, he has published five books of poems, Nights in the Iron Hotel, Acrimony, Corona, Corona, Approximately Nowhere and One Lark, One Horse, and three books of prose, Behind the Lines, Where Have You Been? and Messing About in Boats. He has edited the Faber Book of 20th Century German Poems, and made personal selections from the writings of Malcolm Lowry, and the poetry of Robert Lowell, John Berryman and W.S. Graham. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books and has translated the better part of 100 titles from German, including work by Fallada, Doblin, Kafka, Koeppen and Roth.