Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann (born 25 August 1957) is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".

Biography Michael Hofmann was born in Freiburg im Breisgau (West Germany), the son of German novelist Gert Hofmann and his wife Eva (Thomas) Hofmann, a teacher. He grew up in a family with a literary tradition. His maternal grandfather edited the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. Hofmann's family first moved to Bristol in 1961, and later to Edinburgh. He was educated at Winchester College, and then studied English Literature and Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1979. For the next four years, he pursued postgraduate study at the University of Regensburg and Trinity College, Cambridge. He has since gone on to hold visiting professorships at the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, the New School University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. He was first a visitor to the University of Florida in 1990, joined the faculty in 1994, and became full-time in 2009. He has been teaching poetry and translation workshops.

In 2008, Hofmann was Poet-in-Residence in the state of Queensland in Australia.

Hofmann has two sons, Max (1991) and Jakob (1993). He splits his time between Hamburg and Gainesville, Florida.

Honours Hofmann received the Cholmondeley Award in 1984 for Nights in the Iron Hotel and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1988 for Acrimony. The same year, he also received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß (The Double Bass). In 1993 he received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize again for his translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome. In 1997 he received the Arts Council Writer's Award for his collection of poems Approximately Nowhere, In 2000, Hofmann was selected as the recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his translation of Joseph Roth's novel Rebellion (Die Rebellion). In 2003 he received another Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of his father's Luck, In 2005 Hofmann runner-up for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Gert Ledig's The Stalin Organ.

Hofmann was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.

His translation of Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Kairos won them the International Booker Prize in 2024, the first occasion on which the prize was won by either a German writer or a male translator.

Critical writing Maria Tumarkin describes Hofmann's review writing as "masterful" and "convention-eviscerating". Philip Oltermann remarks on the "savagery" with which Hofmann "can wield a hatchet", stating (with reference to Hofmann's antipathy towards Stefan Zweig) that: "Like a Soho drunk stumbling into the National Portrait Gallery in search of a good scrap, Hofmann has battered posthumous reputations with the same glee as those of the living."

Selected bibliography

Author

Translator

Koeppen, Wolfgang (2003. A Sad Affair. Norton.

Editor