Gila Lustiger

Gila Lustiger was born in Frankfurt, Germany, a daughter of historian Arno Lustiger. In 1981, at age 18, she went to Israel, where she studied German and comparative literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1983 to 1986, she was a lecturer in German literature and children's literature at Tel Aviv University. Since 1987, she has lived in Paris with her husband, writer Emmanuel Moses, and their two children. She worked as a journalist for the German-language programs of Radio France Internationale and ZDF, and as an editor for various French publishers. She translated works of the Israeli poets Asher Reich and T. Carmi, as well as the French writer Jules Supervielle. Her debut novel, Die Bestandsaufnahme (English translation: The Inventory, 2001), first published in 1995, dealt with the fate of Jews in Nazi Germany. It was followed by five other novels, including Aus einer schönen Welt (From a Beautiful World, 1997), and the autobiographical So sind wir (So We Are, 2005). Die Schuld der Anderen (The Guilt of Others) became a bestseller in 2015 and won the Jakob Wassermann Literature Prize. Lustiger was awarded the Horst Bingel Prize for Literature in 2016 for her essay Erschütterung−Über den Terror (We Are Not Afraid, 2017).