Ilse Aichinger was born in Vienna on November 1st, 1921. In 1948, she published her novel The Greater Hope about wartime in Vienna. It became one of her most famous early texts. Her novel, her poems and her other prose were translated into many languages and won her many awards, a. o. the Prize of Gruppe 47 in 1952, the Petrarca Prize in 1982, the Franz Kafka Prize in 1983, the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1995 and in 2015, the Grand Art Prize of the State of Salzburg. Ilse Aichinger died on November 11, 2016, at the age of 95.
