Distinguished translator of all of the most important German-language writersResponsible for introducing Holderlin, Brecht and Rilke to English audiencesHe was awarded Aristeion Prize in 1990 and an OBEHamburger featured as a character in W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn

The Michael Hamburger Reader is the definitive collection of poems, translations, essays, interviews and personal reflections by one of the most influential Anglo-German writers of the last century. Dennis O’Driscoll – a friend and fellow poet – has distilled Hamburger’s giant oeuvre into an essential volume that defines his legacy. The translations from German, Italian and French start with Goethe and Hölderlin and end with W. G. Sebald, via Celan, Bachmann, Brecht, and Nelly Sachs, among others. Hamburger’s own poems, with their subtle musical and philosophical inquiry, are generously sampled, as are his critical essays on major European writers, from Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn to Samuel Beckett and T. S. Eliot.