Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Slovakia, to a Hungarian mother and a Slovenian father, and spent her childhood in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste. She studied Slavic Languages and Literature, and Romance Languages and Literature, and has been Lecturer at the University of Zürich since 1975, and also a freelance writer, translator and journalist. She lives in Zürich. Ilma Rakusa is the author of several collections of poetry (including A farewell to everything, Love after love) and prose – and is a busy translator from French, Russian, Serbian, Croatian and Hungarian (Marina Tsvetaeva, Danilo Kiš, Imre Kertész, Péter Nádas). Her works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Arabic, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croation. She was awarded several prizes.