Zsuzsanna Gahse


Zsuzsanna Gahse is a Hungarian-born German-language writer and translator who lives in Switzerland.

Life and works

Zsuzsanna Gahse is the daughter of Hungarian parents, and Hungarian is her mother tongue. Her family fled to the West after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and settled in Vienna, where Gahse attended high school and learnt the German language. She began publishing literary works in 1969, and from 1978, encouraged by her mentor Helmut Heißenbüttel, translating works from Hungarian. She has published German translations of works by István Eörsi, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas and Zsuzsa Rakovszky, as well as producing a range of essays and fiction under her own name. From 1989 to 1993 she was a lecturer at the University of Tübingen. In 1996, she lectured in poetry at the University of Bamberg.
Today she lives mainly in Müllheim, in the Swiss Canton of Thurgau.
Zsuzsanna Gahse is a member of the PEN Centers in Germany and Switzerland, as well as the authors' association Die Kogge.
In 2019, she has been awarded this year's Swiss Grand Prix Literature for her life's work.

Prizes and awards