Kann man das Küssen verlernen?
Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Rimavská Sobota/Slovakia, to a Hungarian mother and a Slovenian father, and spent her childhood in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste. From 1965 until 1971 she studied Slavic and Romance Languages and Literature in Zürich, Paris and St. Petersburg, and in 1971 she was awarded a doctorate for her dissertation on the Theme of Loneliness in Russian Literature. Since 1977 she has been a lecturer at the University of Zürich, and also a freelance writer, translator and journalist (for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Zeit etc). She lives in Zürich.
Rakusa was awarded, amongst many others, the Petrarca Prize for Translation (1991), the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2003), the Swiss Book Prize (2009) for Mehr Meer (More of the Sea) and the Manès Sperber Prize (2015).
