Reinhard Jirgl

Jirgl was born in Berlin-Friedrichshain.^[1] He became a skilled worker for electromechanics. Then he completed a degree in electronics at Humboldt University, Berlin.^[1] He made first attempts at prose during his studies in the early 1970s.^[1] Since 1975 he worked as an engineer at the Academy of Sciences. He gave up his profession in 1978 to devote more time to writing.^[2] He worked as a lighting and service technician at the Volksbühne in Berlin.^[2] After submitting his first novel Mutter Vater Roman to a Berlin publishing house in 1985, he was accused of a "non-Marxist conception of history".^[2] The publication of the novel was refused.^[2] Until 1989, none of his manuscripts were published.^[2] Since 2009 he has been a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature.^[2] and he is member of the PEN Centre Germany.^[3]

Jirgl received the 2003 Rheingau Literatur Preis for his collected works and in particular The Unfinished, which is about the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans and inspired by his own family's history.^[4][5] In 2010 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize by the German Academy for Language and Literature.^[6] His 2013 novel Nichts von euch auf Erden was shortlisted for the German Book Prize.^[7]

At the beginning of 2017, Jirgl withdrew completely from the public.^[8] He lives in Berlin.^[8]