One of the world's greatest living poets and essayists, Dresden-born Durs Grünbein has been the recipient of many national and international awards, including the Berlin Literature Prize, the Georg Büchner Prize, the Premio Internazionale di Poesia Pier Paolo Pasolini, the US Independent Publisher Book Award, and the Tomas Trantrömer Prize. Since 1988, when the then twenty- five-year-old's first collection of poetry, Gray Zone in the Morning, appeared--a mordantly poignant poetic reckoning with life in the former East Germany--Durs Grünbein has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
