Anna Mitgutsch is one of the figureheads of Austrian literature today. A graduate in English and German of Salzburg University, she taught both in the UK and America and, in 1985, published her first novel Die Züchtigung (Punishment). Eight novels, the latest of which Zwei Leben und ein Tag (Two Lives and a Day) was published in 2007, testify to her outstanding narrative talent. Her work examines how closely the fate of individual, especially that of Jewish women in the 20th century, is interwoven with, and shaped by, the course of collective history. Mitgutsch’s critical work has included the writing of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and her translations, the poems of Philip Larkin. Her own books have been translated into various European languages and Japanese.