Biographical note

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is one of Europe’s most popular and acclaimed authors and playwrights. His many novels and story collections include The Most Beautiful Book in the World (Europa, 2009), Oscar & the Lady in Pink, and Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran. A keen music lover, Schmitt has also translated into French The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni from the original Italian. In 2001, he was awarded the French Academy’s Grand Prix du Théatre. Schmitt divides his time between Paris, France, and Belgium. Steven Rendall has translated ninety-six books from French and German, four of which have won major translation prizes. His translations for Europa Editions include Disturbance by Philippe Lançon (2019) and The Tyranny of Algorithms by Miguel Benasayag (2021). He is professor emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. He lives in France. Addie Leak is a co-translator of Hisham Bustani's Waking Up to My City (Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2023) and Mostafa Nissabouri’s For an Ineffable Metrics of the Desert (Otis Books, 2018), and her translations from French and Arabic have appeared in multiple digital and print venues, most recently The Common and The Georgia Review. She is currently based in Portland, Oregon.