Pierre Frei was born in 1930. He grew up in Berlin, close to the underground station 'Onkel Toms Hütte'. He published his first short stories at the age of sixteen before going on to study journalism. He later worked as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Cairo, New York and London. He now lives in a chateau in the South-West of France. Translation rights available from Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH Lizenzabteilung Neumarkter Straße 28 81673 Munich Germany Tel: +49 89 41 36 36 79 Email: christine.scharf@randomhouse.de Contact: Christine Scharf Applications for assistance with translation costs - Germany Karl Blessing Verlag and Bertelsmann Buch AG (now Random House Germany) were founded by the publisher Dr. Karl H. Blessing in February 1996. Dr. Blessing and his team pride themselves on their personal relationship with their authors and work to ensure that their books reach a wide readership. Blessing Verlag specialises in high-quality popular fiction with a focus on crime novels and thrillers. Its non-fiction list focuses mainly on contemporary history. Authors include Michael Crichton, Noah Gordon, Scott Turow, Kathy Reichs, Arundhati Roy and Amitav Gosh.