Andreas Maier was born in Bad Nauheim outside Frankfurt in 1967. In addition to winning the Ernst Willner Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Literary Competition in Klagenfurt, Austria, in 2000, he received the Jürgen Ponto Foundation's Literary Support Prize and the Aspekte Literary Prize for his first novel Wäldchestag. Kenneth J. Northcott is a professor emeritus of German at the University of Chicago. He has translated many books, among them Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator, Histrionics, and Three Novellas.