Claudio Magris has been a professor of Germanic studies at the University of Trieste since 1978. He is the author of Danube, a bestselling novel now translated into more than twenty languages, and in 2001 he was awarded the Erasmus Prize. He has translated into Italian the works of such authors as Ibsen, Kleist, Schnitzler, Buchner, and Grillparzer. Anne Milano Appel is an award-winning translator.