Norbert Gstrein was born in Mils near Imst, South Tirol in 1961 and now lives in Hamburg.
His novels and stories have met with universal acclaim for their formal brilliance in which the design of reality becomes transparent. Close observation and precisely drawn details merge in complex yet well-balanced sentences to provide descriptions which, in an interplay with chronology and narrative perspective, increasingly become a matter of interpretation. The modes of expression available to language all seem to fall short of the existential dimensions of reality. Gstrein often makes use of a necessary yet honest failure to oppose a premature and sympathetic assimilation of reality.
Norbert Gstrein’s novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages and awarded many prizes, including the Alfred Döblin Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Uwe Johnson Prize and the Siegfried Lenz Prize among others.