Of Meyer's works, All the Lights, Bricks and Mortar, “As We Were Dreaming,” and Dark Satellites have been translated into English.

His studies at the German Literature Institute, Leipzig, were interrupted by a spell in a youth detention centre.

[2] Meyer won a number of prizes for his first novel Als wir träumten (As We Were Dreaming), published in 2006,[2] in which a group of friends grow up and go off the rails in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

His 2013 novel Im Stein (Bricks and Mortar) was translated by Katy Derbyshire and included in the long list for the International Man Booker Prize.

When he again failed to win, he called the jury "bloody wankers" ("verdammte Wichser") and left the prizegiving ceremony, explaining later that he considered the decision "a shame for literature".