Ilma Rakusa

Ilma Rakusa, daughter of a Hungarian mother and a Slovenian father, was born in Slovakia, and grew up in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste before moving with here parents to Zurich. She studied Slavic Philology in Zurich, Paris and St. Petersburg and has been teaching Eastern European Literature at the University of Zurich. Since 1977, she has published a number of poetry collections, as well as books of prose, including essays. Her book of memories “Mehr Meer” has been translated in 13 languages and got the Swiss Book Prize in 2009. For her literary works and her numerous translations from Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian and French into German she was awarded many other prizes: 2005 the Vilenica Prize, 2019 the Kleist Prize and 2025 the Golden Medal of Honor of the Canton of Zurich. Ilma Rakusa is member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. She lives in Zurich.

Five books of her have been translated into Slovene, amongst them “Mehr Meer” (Morje modro moje, 2011) and “Impressum: Langsames Licht” (Impressum: Upocasnjena svetloba, 2023).