Vladimir Vertlib was born in 1966 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In 1971 his family began an immigration odyssey from the Soviet Union to Israel, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States (New York and Boston), before finally returning to Austria. Vertlib studied political economics at the University of Vienna. Read More His first book was published in 1995 and his tenth, Lucia Binar und die russische Seele, was published in 2015 and was longlisted for the German Book Prize. He other awards including the 2001 Adelbert von Chamisso Promotional Prize for non-native authors of literary works in German and the 2012 Adei-Wizo Adelina Della Pergola literary prize for Zwischenstationen. His works have been or are currently being translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech, and Slovenian. Since 1993, he has been working as a freelance writer, social scientist, and translator in Salzburg and Vienna.