MARÍA CECILIA BARBETTA was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1972 and grew up in Ballester, the neighborhood in which this novel takes place. She studied German as a foreign language and received a DAAD-stipend in 1996 to come to Berlin, where she has remained ever since. Prior to the appearance of her first novel, she received the Alfred Döblin fellowship from the Akademie der Kün-ste in 2007 and participated in the reknowned prose writers’ workshop at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. Her first novel, The Los Milagros Tailor Shop, was published in 2008, and was awarded prestigious debut novel prizes, including the Aspekte Prize for Literature and the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize. She received a fellowship for a residence at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2013. In 2017, she was awarded the Alfred Döblin Prize for the manuscript of her second novel, Night- glowing. María Cecilia Barbetta writes in German and lives in Berlin.
