Urs Widmer was a Swiss novelist, playwright, an essayist and a short story writer. Widmer was born in Basel in 1938, and for many years lived in Zurich. Widmer studied German, French and history at the universities of Basel and Montpellier. After completing his PhD, he worked briefly as an editor at Suhrkamp Verlag, but left the publishing house during the Lektoren-Aufstand of 1968. In 2014, Roman Bucheli, Literary Editor of the Neue Z�rcher 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" 

May 21st, 1938 in Basel  /  Died:   Apr 2nd, 2014 - aged 75