His books, which have been translated into more than 35 languages, have sold millions of copies worldwide and have made him "an internationally celebrated star of German literature.

[5] He grew up in Munich and Trossingen and was educated at the Jesuit college Kolleg St. Blasien, about which he wrote in connection with sexual harassment in the Catholic Church in Der Spiegel.

Von Schirach is considered a prominent attorney and represented, among others, the BND spy Norbert Juretzko, and, in the so-called "Politbüro trial", Günter Schabowski.

In August 2010, his second book, Schuld ("Guilt") appeared, again with Piper Verlag, and again it contains short stories drawing on von Schirach's everyday experience as an attorney.

He has since published another collection of three short stories Carl Tohrbergs Weihnachten ("Carl Tohrberg's Christmas"), a second Novel Tabu ("The Girl Who Wasn't There"), a collection of the essays he wrote for Der Spiegel titled Die Würde ist antastbar ("Dignity is violable", alluding to the first sentence of the German Constitution) and the theater play Terror.

The play stages the court trial of an air force pilot accused of mass murder after having shot down a hijacked civil plane which was intended to crash into a soccer stadium.