Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia to a Slovenian father and a Hungarian mother.

After the Matura, she studied Slavic and Romance Languages and Literature in Zürich, Paris and Leningrad between 1965 and 1971.

[1] She has translated works by authors including the French novelist Marguerite Duras, the Russian writer Aleksey Remizov, the Hungarian author Imre Kertész, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and the Serbo-Croatian Danilo Kiš.

[1] Rakusa's novel Mehr Meer (2009) has been translated into many languages and received the Swiss Book Prize in 2009.

[4] Rakusa has been a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung since 1996[1] and the jury of the Zuger Übersetzer-Stipendium [de].