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.
Kurt Lanthaler
the wolf of Ossory (OR: Of the prodigies of our times, and first of a wolf which conversed with a priest)
A letter from Rebecca Cartello in Scarborough, England, to her sister Carla in Longreach, Queensland, 15 December 1955
shadowgraph 73: no longer magic (poetry detected in maria goeppert-mayer’s nobel physics lecture, 1963)
How a Magical Rambler named Margaret saved me from the funeral of everything and prepared me for the Cork Spring Poetry Festival 2012