Libuše Moníková was a Czech-German writer. Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, she studied English and German at Charles University. In 1971, she emigrated to West Germany, where she taught comparative literature. Upon publishing her first novel in 1981, she began to devote herself to writing full-time; she would go on to publish six novels (one unfinished), a number of plays, a volume of essays, and a documentary screenplay. Although her work features a strong connection to Czech culture, she wrote in German, saying, “I adore Czech. That is why I write in German—I have the necessary distance from it which makes it possible to write about things which touch me directly.” She died in 1998 in Berlin.