Shelley Frisch

Shelley Frisch taught German literature at Columbia University and Haverford College, where she chaired the German Department, before turning to translation full-time in the 1990s. Her translations include biographies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl (dual biography), and Franz Kafka.Frisch’s translation of Reiner Stach’s three-volume biography of Kafka (The Early Years, The Decisive Years, and The Years of Insight) was awarded numerous translation prizes, including the 2007Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize and the 2014 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. Among her recent translations are an annotated collection of Kafka’s aphorisms, a volume of Billy Wilder’s early journalism, an overview of Early German Romanticism, and a study of the origins of Critical Theory; she is currently translating a biography of Hannah Arendt.