Born in Freiburg, Germany in 1957, Michael Hofmann grew up in England and lives in London with his wife, the poet Lavinia Greenlaw. His debut collection Nights In The Iron Hotel (1983) won the Cholmondeley Award and Acrimony (1986) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The son of the distinguished German novelist Gert Hofmann, whose work he has translated (along with that of Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth, among many others), Hofmann's verse has frequently explored, in unflinching detail, his uneasy relationship with his father. Approximately Nowhere (1999), his most recent collection, contained several poems which were written in response to Hofmann Senior's death.