Robert Menasse is an Austrian writer, born in Vienna in 1954. He studied German studies, philosophy and political science in Vienna, Salzburg, and Messina. Between 1981 and 1988, he taught at the Institute of Literature Theory at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He has been working as a freelance publicist, columnist, and translator of novels from Portuguese into German. Since returning to Europe from Brazil, he has mainly lived in Berlin, Vienna, and Amsterdam. Menasse published 5 novels so far and received several awards. In his work, he often criticizes the latent form of anti-Semitism still widespread in the German-speaking world today. Most recently, he wrote about the future of Europe and the European Union, criticizing tendencies of re-nationalization (especially in Germany, but also elsewhere) and anti-European integration movements, which are a reaction to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath.
