Kristof Magnusson

After his training as a church musician he studied literary and scenic writing in Leipzig and Berlin as well as Icelandic literature in Reykjavík.

Both his debut and his second novel Das war ich nicht (It wasn’t me), described as “a fast-paced, cleverly crafted, genuinely funny and enjoyable read“,[3] have been translated into several languages.

“Kristof’s novels fall into the category of literary fiction, but demonstrate more humour than this genre typically offers“,[6] says Steph Morris after a long conversation with Magnusson in spring 2015, during which the author provided information on several aspects of his oeuvre, including his extensive researches that allow him to gather substantial detailed knowledge about the different living environments he describes in his books.

[7] Six authors, alongside Magnusson Henning Ahrens, Mirko Bonné, Nora Bossong, Olga Grjasnowa und Alissa Walser, wrote texts about Frankfurt’s history in simple German and developed a set of rules for this purpose.

[8][9] In an article about the project, Magnusson wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung concerning the impact of the set of rules: “The rules for simple language, which seem to expel any literaricity from a text, suddenly – now that a group of authors has framed them before writing – appear as an artistic manifest that turns minimalism into a virtue.“[10] He spoke for “putting a greater effort in searching for fields in which we can usefully reduce barriers.