Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012. Over the course of his career he won France’s Me´dicis Prize for Indian Nocturne, the Italian PEN Prize for Requiem, and the Aristeion Prize for Pereira Maintains. A staunch critic of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he once said that “democracy isn’t a state of perfection, it has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”
Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including the best-selling Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. His novels include Europa which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  His essays have appeared in the The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Parks is also a renowned translator from the Italian and lives in Verona.