The Females

About the Author and Translator

WOLFGANG HILBIG (1941–2007) was one of the major German writers to emerge in the postwar era. Though raised in East Germany, he proved so troublesome to the authorities that in 1985 he was granted permission to leave to the West. The author of over twenty books, he received virtually all of Germany’s major literary prizes, capped by the 2002 Georg Büchner Prize, Germany’s highest literary honor.

ISABEL FARGO COLE is a U.S.-born, Berlin-based writer and translator. Her translations include Wolfgang Hilbig’s The Sleep of the Righteous, “I,” Old Rendering Plant (for which she received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize), and The Tidings of the Trees. She has also been the recipient of a prestigious PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and her novel Die grüne Grenze was a finalist for the 2018 Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse.