Saul Friedl nder is an award-winning Israeli historian and currently a professor of history at UCLA. He was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews, grew up in France, and experienced the German Occupation of 1940-1944. His historical works have garnered much praise and recognition, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Years of Extermination- Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. Helen R. Lane was a renowned translator of Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian literary works into English. She translated works by numerous important authors, including Jorge Amado, Marguerite Duras, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Octavio Paz. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1975 and 1985. Alternating Current, Lane's translation of Octavio Paz, shared the 1974 U.S. National Book Award in the Translation category.