Michael Roes was born in 1960 in Rhede, Westphalia, and lives in Berlin. Research trips have taken him to Yemen, among other places, where he wrote the ethnopoetic novel "Rub'al-Khali. Leeres Viertel" (Empty Quarter), for which the author received the Bremen Literature Prize. In 2000, Roes shot his first feature film "Someone is Sleeping in my Pain", an Arabic Macbeth, in New York and Yemen. For his literary work, he has been awarded the Else Lasker-Schüler Dramatist Prize, the Alice Salomon Poetics Prize, and the Annette von Droste-Hülshoff Prize, among others. His novel "Die Laute" was nominated for the German Book Prize. Recent publications include the novels "Zeithain", "Herida Duro", "Der Traum vom Fremden", and the essay collection "Melancholie des Reisens".