Kurt Lanthaler

Kurt Lanthaler was born in Bozen/Bolzano in 1960, a member of the 350,000-strong German-speaking minority in the Italian South Tyrol. He is best known for the cult Tschonnie Tschenett crime novel series (1993–2002) and as a translator of Italian fiction. Now living in Berlin with his Greek wife, Lanthaler brings an unusual slant to contemporary European fiction, balancing his somewhat complex identity as a member of a linguistic minority with a distinct cosmopolitanism, playing plots and characters across and between the German, Greek and Italian cultural worlds. Lanthaler’s work has been adapted for radio (‘Der Tote im Fels’ [‘The Body On the Crag’], WDR/ORF 2002) and cinema (‘Das Kettenkarussell’ [‘The Flying Chairs’], directed by Marco Antoniazzi in 2004). His most recent novel, Das Delta, the story of lives lived in the marshy plains of the Po Valley, was published in 2007.