Iris Hanika, born in Würzburg in 1962, has lived in Berlin since 1979.
She received the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize in 2006. Her novel Treffen sich zwei was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2008. The Bureau of Past Management (titled Das Eigentliche in German), was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature and the LiteraTour Nord Prize.
The Bureau of Past Management was Hanika’s first novel to be published in English. Her novel Echo’s Chambers won the Hermann Hesse Literature Prize in 2020 and the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2021. (2021)