David Albahari was born in Serbia and lived for many years in Canada. He now divides his time between Belgrade and Calgary. He has published thirteen books of short stories, fifteen novels, six books of essays, a book of three short plays, and two books for children, many of which have been translated into other languages. Of these, two collections of his short stories, Words Are Something Else and Learning Cyrillic, have appeared in English, as well as the novels Tsing, Bait, Snow Man, Globetrotter, Götz and Meyer, and Leeches.