Sherko Fatah was born in East Berlin in 1964 to a German mother and an Iraqi Kurd father. Fatah spent part of his childhood in Iraq, where his extended family still lives today. In 1975, he and his parents settled in West Germany. Fatah studied philosophy and art history in West Berlin and wrote a master's thesis on philosophical hermeneutics.

In 1999 he attended a writers' workshop at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, one of Germany's most prestigious literary venues. During this time he worked on his first novel, Im Grenzland [At the Borderline], for which he received the Aspecte Prize in 2001. His second book, Donnie, the story of a foreign legionnaire haunted by memories, has just been published. Sherko Fatah writes in German.