Hanns-Josef Ortheil

He has written many autobiographical and historical novels, some of which have been translated into 11 languages, according to WorldCat:[2] French, Dutch, Modern Greek, Spanish, Chinese, Lithuanian, Japanese, Slovenian, and Russian.

He was born the fifth son in an educated family; his mother, Mary Catherine Ortheil, was a librarian and his father a railroad surveyor and director.

[3] As a child, he did not speak, because his mother had temporarily lost her speech, following the loss of four sons during the Second World War.

In 1976 he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the theory of the novel in the era of the French Revolution at the German Institute of the University of Mainz.

[4] Among his published works is a travel narrative (Die Moselreise) he had already written as a boy of eleven, when his father took him on a tour of the Moselle.