Alice M. Ekert-Rotholz (1900–1995)

Alice Ekert was born in Germany to a British-Swedish businessman father and a German Jewish mother. In 1920, she married Ludwig Rotholz, a dentist, and thereafter went by the surname Ekert-Rotholz. She published her first poems and songs in 1930. After the Nazi regime took power in Germany in 1933, Alice and her husband moved to the UK, and then to Thailand in 1939. There she was active in Christian missionary work. In 1952, she returned with her ​​husband to her home town of Hamburg, Germany, and worked as a journalist while writing novels and travel books. Her first novel, Reis aus Silberschalen (Rice in Silver Dishes, 1954) concerned a German family reunited in Bangkok after World War II. Following the death of her husband in 1959, she moved to London and continued to write until her death. Her books were most popular in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were bestsellers, and many remain in print.