Payback: Introduction by Michael Hofmann - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Gert Ledig (1921-99) was born in Leipzig and grew up in Vienna. At the age of eighteen he volunteered for the army and was wounded at the battle of Leningrad in 1942. He drew on his experiences for his novel The Stalin Organ. Sent back home, he trained as a ship-building engineer and was caught in several air raids, which led him to write Payback. Its reissue in 1999 in Germany led to the author's much publicized rediscovery there.

Michael Hofmann is a poet and German translator. His most recent collection of poems is One Lark, One Horse. He is a Granta contributing editor.

Shaun Whiteside has translated over 50 books from German, French, Italian and Dutch, including novels by Amélie Nothomb, Luther Blissett, Wu Ming and Marcel Möring. A former chair of the Translators Association, he sits on the editorial board of New Books in German and the Advisory Panel of the British Centre for Literary Translation, where he regularly teaches at the summer school. He lives in London.