Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann (born 25 August 1957 in Freiburg, West Germany) is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.

Biography

Michael Hofmann is the son of the German novelist Gert Hofmann. Hofmann's family first moved to Bristol in 1961, and later to Edinburgh. He was educated at Winchester College^[1] and then studied English Literature and Classics. In 1979 he received a BA and in 1984 an MA from the University of Cambridge. In 1983 he started working as a freelance writer, translator, and literary critic. Hofmann has held a visiting professorship at the University of Michigan and currently teaches poetry workshops at the University of Florida. ^[2] He splits his time between London and Gainesville. In 2008, Hofmann was Poet-in-Residence in the state of Queensland in Australia. He has two sons, Max (1991) and Jakob (1993).

Honors

Hofmann received the Cholmondeley Award in 1984 for Nights in the Iron Hotel^[3] and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1988 for Acrimony.^[4] The same year, he also received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß (The Double Bass).^[5] In 1993 he received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize again for his translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome.^[5]

Hofmann was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1995 for the translation of his father's novel The Film Explainer,^[6] and Michael was nominated again in 2003 for his translation of Peter Stephan Jungk's The Snowflake Constant.^[7] In 1997 he received the Arts Council Writer's Award for his collection of poems Approximately Nowhere,^[6] and the following year he received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his translation of Herta Müller's novel The Land of Green Plums.^[6]

In 1999 Hofmann was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Joseph Roth's The String of Pearls.^[8] In 2000 Hofmann was selected as the recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his translation of Joseph Roth's novel Rebellion (Die Rebellion).^[9] In 2003 he received another Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of his father's Luck,^[5] and in 2004 he was awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for his translation of Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel.^[10] In 2005 Hofmann received his fourth Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Gerd Ledig's The Stalin Organ.^[5] Hofmann served as a judge for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002, and in 2006 Hofmann made the Griffin's international shortlist for his translation of Durs Grünbein's Ashes for Breakfast.^[11]

Selected bibliography

Author

Cover of
20th Century German Poetry

• Hofmann, Michael (1984), Nights in the iron hotel, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-13116-7 
• Hofmann, Michael (1986), Acrimony, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-14528-7 
• Hofmann, Michael (1993), Corona, Corona, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-17052-4 
• Hofmann, Michael (1999), Approximately nowhere: poems, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-19524-4 
• Hofmann, Michael (2002), Behind the lines: pieces on writing and pictures, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-19523-7 
• Hofmann, Michael (2014), Where Have You Been?: Selected Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-25996-9 

Translator

• Tucholsky, Kurt; Hofmann, Michael (1985), Castle Gripsholm: a summer story, London: Chatto and Windus, ISBN 978-0-7011-2993-4 
• Wenders, Wim; Hofmann, Michael (1989), Emotion pictures: reflections on the cinema, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-15272-8 
• Wenders, Wim; Hofmann, Michael (1992), The logic of images: essays and conversations, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-16517-9 
• Koeppen, Wolfgang; Hofmann, Michael (1992), Death in Rome, London: Granta, ISBN 978-1-86207-589-4 
• Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael (1995), The string of pearls, London: Granta, ISBN 978-1-86207-087-5 
• Hofmann, Gert; Hofmann, Michael (1995), The film explainer, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, ISBN 978-0-8101-1293-3 
• Süskind, Patrick; Hofmann, Michael (1997), The double-bass, London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0-7011-2993-4 
• Müller, Herta; Hofmann, Michael (1998), The Land of Green Plums, London: Granta, ISBN 978-1-86207-260-2 
• Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael (1999), Rebellion, London: Picador, ISBN 978-0-312-26383-6 
• Koeppen, Wolfgang; Hofmann, Michael (2002), The Hothouse, London: Granta Books, ISBN 978-1862075092 
• Stamm, Peter; Hofmann, Michael (2002), Agnes, London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0-7475-4752-5 
• Jungk, Peter Stephan; Hofmann, Michael (2002), The snowflake constant, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-20182-2 
• Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael (2003), Radetzky march, London: Granta, ISBN 978-1-86207-605-1 
• Jungk, Peter Stephan; Hofmann, Michael (2004), The perfect American, New York: Handsel Books, ISBN 978-1-59051-115-2 
• Jünger, Ernst; Hofmann, Michael (2004), Storm of steel, London: Penguin Classics, ISBN 978-0-14-243790-2 
• Kafka, Franz; Hofmann, Michael (2004), Amerika: the man who disappeared, New York: New Directions Publishers, ISBN 978-0-8112-1513-8 
• Hofmann, Gert; Hofmann, Michael (2004), Lichtenberg and the little flower girl, New York: New Directions Publishers, ISBN 978-0-8112-1568-8 
• Ledig, Gert; Hofmann, Michael (2004), The stalin organ, London: Granta, ISBN 978-1-86207-652-5 
• Grünbein, Durs; Hofmann, Michael (2006), Ashes for breakfast: selected poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-53013-6 
• Bernhard, Thomas; Hofmann, Michael (2006), Frost, New York: Knopf, ISBN 978-1-4000-4066-7 
• Stamm, Peter; Hofmann, Michael (2006), Unformed landscape, New York: Handsel Books, ISBN 978-1-59051-226-5 
• Kafka, Franz; Hofmann, Michael (2006), The Zürau aphorisms, New York: Schocken, ISBN 978-0-8052-1207-5 
• Stamm, Peter; Hofmann, Michael (2008), In strange gardens and other stories, New York: Other Press, ISBN 978-1-59051-169-5 
• Wander, Fred; Hofmann, Michael (2007), The seventh well, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-06538-1 
• Keun, Irmgard; Hofmann, Michael (2008), Child of all nations, London: Penguin Classics, ISBN 978-0-7139-9907-5 
• Stamm, Peter; Hofmann, Michael (2008), On a day like this, New York: Other Press, ISBN 978-1-59051-279-1 
• Fallada, Hans; Hofmann, Michael (2009), Every Man Dies Alone, New York: Melville House, ISBN 978-1-933633-63-3 
• Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael (2012), Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-32379-5 
• Benn, Gottfried (2013), Hofmann, Michael, ed., Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 9780374175375 

Editor

• Hofmann, Michael; Lasdun, James, eds. (1994), After Ovid: new metamorphoses, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-52478-4 
• Hofmann, Michael, ed. (2001), Robert Lowell, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-23040-2 
• Hofmann, Michael, ed. (2005), The Faber book of 20th century German poems, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-19703-3 
• Hofmann, Michael, ed. (2006), Twentieth-century German poetry: an anthology, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-10535-8 

Notes

External links

• Hofmann's faculty page at the University of Florida
• Michael Hofmann at British Council: Literature
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip

Recipients of the International Dublin Literary Award
If the winning book is a translation, the prize is divided between the writer and the translator, with the writer receiving €75,000 and the translator €25,000.
David Malouf (1996) Javier Marías / Margaret Jull Costa (1997) Herta Müller / Michael Hofmann (1998) Andrew Miller (1999) Nicola Barker (2000) Alistair MacLeod (2001) Michel Houellebecq / Frank Wynne (2002) Orhan Pamuk / Erdağ Göknar (2003) Tahar Ben Jelloun / Linda Coverdale (2004) Edward P. Jones (2005) Colm Tóibín (2006) Per Petterson / Anne Born (2007) Rawi Hage (2008) Michael Thomas (2009) Gerbrand Bakker / David Colmer (2010) Colum McCann (2011) Jon McGregor (2012) Kevin Barry (2013) Juan Gabriel Vásquez / Anne McLean (2014) Jim Crace (2015) Akhil Sharma (2016)