Urs Widmer
Urs Widmer in April 2012
Born	(1938-05-21)21 May 1938 Basel, Switzerland
Died	2 April 2014(2014-04-02) (aged 75)
Occupation	Novelist, essayist, playwright
Language	German
Nationality	Swiss
Period	1968–2013
Notable awards	Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (1976) Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis (1997) Schweizer Literaturpreise (2014)

Urs Widmer (21 May 1938 – 2 April 2014) was a Swiss novelist, playwright, an essayist, and a short story writer.^[1][2]

Biography

Widmer was born in Basel in 1938, and for many years lived in Zurich.^[1] Widmer studied German, French, and history at the universities of Basel and Montpellier.^[1] After completing his PhD, he worked briefly as an editor at Suhrkamp Verlag, but left the publishing house during the Lektoren-Aufstand ("Editors' Revolt") of 1968.^[1]

In 2014, Roman Bucheli, Literary Editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, said that Widmer:

"is without doubt one of the most significant and versatile talents currently at work in the field of contemporary German-language literature as well as one of the most successful. His sales are invariably in the high five-figure bracket"^[1]

Works in English translation

• My mother's lover ("Der Geliebte meiner Mutter"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2011], ISBN 978-1-906-49796-5.
• My father's book ("Das Buch des Vaters"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2011], ISBN 978-0-857-42017-6.
• On life, death, and this and that of the rest. The Frankfurt lectures on poetics ("Vom Leben, vom Tod und vom Übrigen auch dies und das"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2013], ISBN 978-0-857-42100-5.
• The blue soda siphon ("Der blaue Siphon"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2014], ISBN 978-0-857-42211-8.
• In the Congo ("Im Kongo"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2015], ISBN 978-0-857-42315-3.
• Mr Adamson ("Herr Adamson"). Tr. Donal McLaughlin, London, Seagull Books [2015], ISBN 978-0-857-42232-3.

Awards and honors

• 1977 Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden, Fernsehabend
• 1992 Preis der SWR-Bestenliste
• 1997 Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, Top Dogs
• 1998 Heimito von Doderer Prize
• 2001 Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize
• 2002 Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste^[1]
• 2013 Friedrich Hölderlin Prize^[1]