Ulla Lenze, born in Mönchengladbach in 1973, studied music and philosophy in Cologne. In 2003 her debut novel Schwester und Bruder was published by DuMont and awarded the Ernst Willner Prize at the Klagenfurt Bachmann Competition, the Jürgen Ponto Prize for best debut novel, and Cologne’s Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Scholarship. Her second novel, Archanu, was published by Ammann Verlag in 2008. She lived as a writer-in-residence in Mumbai, Venice and Istanbul, and her travels have taken her to Libya, Syria and Iran. Her novel The Small Remains of Death was published by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt in 2012, followed by The Endless City in 2015.