Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker was born in 1982 in Upper Austria and grew up on his parents’ farm, which he now runs.
He studied agriculture, history and international development in Vienna, and spent time in South America, Germany, and Sweden before completing his debut novel, Der lange Gang über die Stationen (The Long Passage over the Stations), for which he received the literature prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation on the day of the book’s release.
Since then, Kaiser-Mühlecker has written seven more novels and received numerous literary awards and fellowships. His novel Fremde Seele, dunkler Wald (Strange Soul, Dark Forest) was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2016, while Wilderer (Poacher), a novel set in a rural setting, was longlisted for the same prize in 2022 and took home the Bayerischer Buchpreis Belletristik in the same year. (2022)