Wolfgang Herrndorf (b. 1965 in Hamburg) studied painting and was an illustrator for the satirical magazine Titanic. His debut novel, In Plüschgewittern (In Plush Storms), was published in 2002. In 2008, he received the German Storyteller Prize for Diesseits des Van-Allen-Gürtels (This Side of the Van Allen Belt). "So it is possible after all: You can write intelligent and extremely funny stories in German," wrote Ijoma Mangold in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. For Tschick, he received the 2011 Clemens Brentano Advancement Award and the German Youth Literature Prize, and in 2012, he was awarded the Hans Fallada Prize. Wolfgang Herrndorf died on August 26, 2013.