Tilman Spengler

Tilman Spengler, born in Oberhausen in 1947, studied Sinology, political science and modern history in Heidelberg, Taipei and Munich. A sinologist, writer and journalist, he was co-editor of the magazine Kursbuch for around 30 years and worked for several years at the Max Planck Institute for Social Sciences. Much of his writing explores China and other cultures. His best-known works include the fictional biography Lenin’s Brain, The Painter of Peking, The Forehead, the Eyes, the Mouth and Waghalsiger Versuch, in der Luft zu kleben. Spengler was Mainz’s city writer in 1999 and received the Literature Prize of the City of Munich in 2008.