Leila Vennewitz (1912–2007), was born in England and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where she began her study of German. She also spent twelve years in China studying Chinese and Italian. Vennewitz became known for her translations of Heinrich Boll, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). She also translated Martin Walser, Uwe Johnson, Hermann Hesse, Nicolas Born, Alexander Kluge, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Jurek Becker, Uwe Timm, Walter Kempowski and Alfred Andersch. Vennewitz received many awards during her life, including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (1968), the Goethe House/PEN prize (1978) and the German Literary Prize (1989) from the American Translator’s Association. She died in Vancouver, where she had lived for the last fifty years of her life.