Navid Kermani, born 1967, lives as a writer in Cologne. After completing school, he studied Orientalism, Philosophy, and Theater in Cologne, Cairo, and Bonn, where he received the post-doctoral degree(“Habilitation”).
From 2000 to 2003 he was a Long-Term Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute for Advanced Study.
The year 2008 he spent as a fellow at the Villa Massimo, German Academy of Rome. From 2009 to 2012 he was Senior Fellow at the “Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg Essen” (Institute for Advanced Study). He gave the Lectures on Poetics in Frankfurt, Göttingen and Mainz, and he was visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt and at the Dartmouth College, NH. He is a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .
For his literary and academic work he was awarded numerous prices, inluding the Hannah-Arendt-Price, the Kleist-Price, the Joseph-Breitbach-Preis, the Peace Price, the Hölderlin-Price.
His literary books are published by Carl Hanser Verlag (German) and Seagull Books (English), his academic and non-fictional works by C. H. Beck (German) and Polity Press (English).