The Buddenbrooks

Mike Mitchell taught at the University of Reading and the University of Stirling before becoming a full-time literary translator. He has translated over one hundred works, both fiction and non-fiction, from German and French. His translation of Herbert Rosendorfer's Letters Back from Ancient China (1997) was awarded the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 1998.

Ritchie Robertson retired in 2021 as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Queen's College. His many books include Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985), The Enlightenment: The Pursiuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2020) and German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime (2024), as well as books on Kafka and Goethe in OUP's Very Short Introductions series. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the British Academy.